This Civic Season
Juneteenth is a week away, and Bridge of Lament 2025 is about to begin
This year’s Bridge of Lament theme is Education. Join us, beginning next week on Juneteenth, as we look at the strength of Black institutions and educators in Lynchburg’s history, remembering those who have served our children in the past and advocating for our students today. Let’s cross this bridge together.
This week, Lynchburg's educational achievement gap between Black and white students was in the news.1 What better opportunity to recall the words of author and pastor Duke Kwon, who once asked on social media, “What if the period between June 19th and July 4th were to become an annual 16-day season of national remembrance, lament, and renewal?”2
“Civic Season,” a network of hundreds of museums, historic sites, libraries, and archives providing access to our young people “who have the most at stake,” explains that
“July 4th commemorates the moment a new nation was born, based on ideals that each generation since has worked to bring to life: freedom, equality, justice, and opportunity. Juneteenth, celebrated just a few weeks earlier, reminds us of the struggles and hard-won victories in our ongoing journey to form a ‘more perfect union.’ Civic Season unites our oldest federal holiday with our newest, mobilizing a movement to understand our past and shape our future.”3
Social entrepreneur Natasha Sistruck Robinson, who graduated from the US Naval Academy, served as a US Marine, and mentors youth today, asks, “What if Black people did not bear the burden of that work? What if the people who have benefited the most from generations of Black enslavement bore the responsibility to prepare for such a remembrance prayerfully and thoughtfully?”4
Community has always been crucial for the work of remembrance and lament, for renewal and fullness of joy, because, in the words of Dr. King, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Join us, beginning next week on Juneteenth, as we look at the strength of Black institutions and educators in Lynchburg’s history, remembering those who have served our children in the past and advocating for our students today. Let’s cross this bridge together.
https://www.wfxrtv.com/news/concerned-citizen-speaks-out-against-academic-disparities-in-lynchburg/amp/
Requoted from, Robinson, Journey to Freedom, Our Daily Bread Publishing, 2022, pg 82.
Robinson, Journey to Freedom, Our Daily Bread Publishing, 2022, pg 82.