On Sunday, 20 people gathered at the Freedmen’s Mission Historic Cemetery adjacent to Knoxville College’s campus for a special ceremony honoring the lives of people who were once enslaved in Tennessee.
Hosted by the Beck Cultural Exchange Center,the historic ritual is known as a libation ceremony. It’s the act of offering water or alcohol to the spiritual world as a method of remembering and honoring ancestors and has roots in West African culture.
The Beck Center hosts the ceremony each year on the Sunday before August 8, the day Tennessee Military Governor and future President Andrew Johnson freed his personal slaves at his farm in Greeneville in 1863. Festivities commemorating August 8 began in 1871, led by Sam Johnson, one of the men freed by Johnson…