AUSABLE CHASM — Juneteenth Colors of Freedom in the North Country will blaze red-white-blue and red-green-black Saturday in Clinton and Essex Counties.
The event begins at 9 a.m. with a Welcome, Moment of Prayer and a Brief History of Juneteenth at the North Star Underground Railroad Museum, 1131 Mace Chasm Rd., Ausable Chasm.
The day includes tours, barbecue lunch, performances by the Plattsburgh State Gospel Choir, reveal of recipient of Colors of Freedom Community Service Award, and a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Center healing circle at 3 p.m. at the John Brown Farm in Lake Placid.
“The event will be a mini tour, reenactments. Amy Godine is going to be talking about an ‘Unsettled Debate’ is about whether or not the individuals who got the land from him (Gerrit Smith), those African American men, whether or not they were fugitives or they were actually free American New Yorkers,” Jackie Madison, an event organizer and president of the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association, said.
“There’s a barbecue. We’ll have the Gospel Choir singing freedom songs, and there will be children’s activities as well. There will be quill pen making and Rosanna Wise will read a story.”
KEESEVILLE/PERU
In Keeseville, the mini-tour will visit the site of the Ausable Chasm Horse Nail Works at Birmingham Falls, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, the Congregational Church and Arthur House, the First Baptist Church of Keeseville and the Old Keeseville Cemetery.
In Peru, the tour will stop at the Quaker Union and Cemetery, and the Stephen Keese Smith homestead where direct descendant Neal Burdick will portray his Underground Railroad agent ancestor, and his wife, Barbara Burdick will portray Catherine R. Keese, an educator, Quaker preacher and missionary to Dannemora Prison.
LAKE PLACID
Lunch will be served at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, 115 John Brown Rd., Lake Placid.
“Papa Duke’s is doing a barbecue from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.,” Brendan Mills, site manager, said.
“They are actually pretty famous here. You have a choice of pulled chicken barbecue sandwiches or pulled pork, mac and cheese and coleslaw, and a drink. It’s an $8 charge. That’s the only thing we are charging for. There’s no charge to get into the park or the program itself.”
Children’s programming includes a Scavenger Hunt and games.
Reenactor Bob Andrews will reprise his role in “John Brown’s Last Speech to the Court.”
SONGS OF FREEDOM
The Plattsburgh State Gospel Choir, under the direction of Dr. Dexter Criss will perform “Songs of Freedom.” The choir is fresh from their Juneteenth Brunch appearance in Burlington, Vt.
Selections include “Fix Me” (Raymond Wise, arranger), “Didn’t the Lord Deliver Daniel” (James, Emerson), “This is freedom” (Dexter Criss, arranger), “I’ve Got a Robe” (Raymond Wise, arranger) and “Stand Up Speak Out” (Raymond Wise, composer).
“’Fix Me’ talks about being different than what you are, being renewed, and I think freedom, basically, from a side perspective means being complete,” Criss said.
“If you’re not free, you’re not complete in society. The slaves often through the spirituals would use the Bible stories to talk about freedom. and in the song it says, if the Lord delivered Daniel, why not every man? So in other words, all of us can be free. They were able to have a protest through their songs.”
Criss arranged the song, “This is Freedom” from another song called “Celebrate.”
“It basically says celebrate freedom,” he said.
“Celebrate. It’s hard to believe that there are some people who don’t celebrate everybody should be free. That song talks about that and what freedom is. Of course, ‘I Got A Robe,’ most people have heard of that. The slave owners told the slaves they didn’t have any value other than what they were told to do. But the slaves believed everybody should be free, and everybody had robes and shoes and crowns.
“We will do a song, “Stand Up, Speak Out,’ that’s more interactive that we learned from Raymond Wise at the high school festival back in April. We will definitely ask the audience to join us as we go through certain choreographed moments. People have a lot of fun when we do this selection.”
GERRIT SMITH ZONE
Reenactor Evan Beech will present his research on Gerrit Smith, a Peterboro, N.Y. based social reformer, abolitionist, and philanthropist who “gave away forty acres of Adirondack land in Northern New York to 3,000 poor (and “temperate”) African Americans, to permit them to meet the requirements for voting, and in hopes of promoting self-sufficiency. He subsequently sold John Brown the land at North Elba, (where Brown is buried, near Lake Placid), according to nps.gov
“A couple of weeks ago, the North Country Homeschooling Group for the first time in their 18 or 16 years of having History Day, where the kids present a topic that they researched, a boy dressed up with a beard, wig, and frock coat as Gerrit Smith,” said Martha Swan, executive director of John Brown Lives!
“He presented this info that he researched on Gerrit Smith, and I said, ‘Wow. How about if you present on Juneteenth before Amy gives her talk?’ I’m pretty sure that Amy is not going to give the kind of biographical data on Gerrit Smith that this boy will. He did some really good research, and he’s so enthusiastic. So to me that’s a really special element about this day.”
Amy Godine is the author of “The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier” (Cornell, November, 2023) and curator of the exhibit, “Dreaming of Timbuctoo,” in the Upper Barn at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site.
On Saturday, she will present “An Unsettled Debate” at the John Brown Farm’s Barn Meeting Room.
“First of all, this isn’t a talk about the Underground Railroad and its Adirondack organizers and beneficiaries and epic rescues. Fantastic subject! But not mine,” Godine writes.
“What interests me is how historians used the history of Gerrit Smith’s land gifts to Black New Yorkers in 1846 to advance their own cultural agendas. In late-19th-century Adirondack histories well into the 1930s, you’ll read about all the hapless southern fugitives who couldn’t make it in the Adirondack woods. Never should have come here. Couldn’t hack it, didn’t fit.
“These assertions were strenuously challenged by late-20th-century Adirondack historians who argued that Smith’s gift land was for Black New Yorkers only, and that’s who came, and escaping fugitives were a literary invention. I’ll talk about what tacit interests these narratives defended, and why a more nuanced, inclusive view of what actually happened in the Black Woods is the reading for our time.”
The event is sponsored by the North Star Underground Railroad Museum; John Brown Lives!; the Essex County Arts Council; Paul Smith’s College; the Adirondack History Museum; the Clinton County Historical Association; the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Center at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh; and New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.