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All right, hello, I am Megan Henry and I'm here with the Humanities Truck. It's May 25th, and may I ask you your name? My name is Steve Williams. Nice to meet you. And the question I have for you today is, what does Juneteenth mean to you? What does Juneteenth mean to me?

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Yes. I grew up with Juneteenth, so it has a whole bunch of different meanings, right? So, when I was a kid, my grandpa used to tell me no slave food, no work. That was Juneteenth. Then I got older. I was living in Denver and Juneteenth was, back in the 70s, really big. There was a guy by the name of Daddy Bruce Randolph. And that usually meant a celebration and a little bit of unity with the family. So, then about 2001, I met a guy by the name of Reverend Ronald B. Myers, Senior MD, who told me that Juneteenth should be a national holiday. And I was like, really? I'm like, that's interesting. And he gave the philosophy. So to me, Juneteenth has a different type of meaning than I guess other people in a fight for that. But it has a, it has a, it has a meaning of the exercise of freedom. In other words, Juneteenth is synonymous with liberty. And how did you get involved with this particular event that we're at today? I started it.

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Oh, okay. I knew about the history from my education committee, and then a year ago I told the team, let's go down there and look at it. So we drove down here and we looked and said wow this is beautiful you can feel the spirit. So, I called back up to the Park Service to ask for a special permit and the Park Service said, wow what do you want to do? And I explained to them the history of what was going on. And it went from a special permit to they partnered with us. They partnered with me. So, we just like, hey, there's stuff that we want to do to bring Juneteenth out of Texas and the rest of America. And this is a very good choice for Virginia. So, yeah, that's why I'm just trying to-that was it. You know, I'm trying to make sure we get it out and make sure people get to know more about it. It's just not a Texas thing. It's always an American celebration. So that's how it got started. I got started. Yes. Oh, okay, that's really cool. Well, is there anything else you'd like to share? Anything about Juneteenth or this event? Like I said, all things Juneteenth, and that's for all things about America, right? So Juneteenth, the Federal legislation can't be critical race theoried away, it can't be rationalized away, it's the commemoration of the celebration of a group of people who were enslaved and when they found out they weren't anymore, they celebrated. Connie Johnson who wrote legislation for out of Oklahoma for the great Maxine Horner wrote, apparently they didn't like did not like being a slave. You know it's a celebration that came soon they got their freedom. So that's that's you know that's a that's a good thing.

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Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you very much. All right, thank you.