Denver’s summer is already hot, and it’s not just the temperature. The nation and world are in turmoil. On Saturday, the city’s streets filled with people protesting the federal government.
But Denver saw a joyful march on Sunday despite the swelter. It was the city’s annual Juneteenth parade, which has roots in Five Points that go back decades.
MiDian Shofner led one of the only groups carrying a message of protest. Members and allies of her organization, Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership, carried a sign that read “someone was lynched in your city” and chanted the names of Jalin Seabron and Kilyn Lewis, Black men who were killed by police in Aurora and Douglas County.
She was thinking about injustice in Denver and nationwide, but Shofner said that existential context didn’t change how celebrating Juneteenth felt.
“It might feel different in the way that people observe it,” she said. “But one thing that I love about our people is that whatever is happening around us, we still gather, and we gather the same way. We gather authentically and we bring all of our stories together.”
Juneteenth, Shofner and others said, is inherently political. The holiday celebrates not the end of American slavery in 1863, but a moment two years later when that news finally reached enslaved African-Americans in Texas…