Buffalo State celebrates Juneteenth: A conversation with Africana Studies representatives

Buffalo State University proudly took part in local Juneteenth 2026 celebrations, including Juneteenth of Buffalo's 50th Anniversary Juneteenth Parade, continuing its long history of participation in this celebration that, as described by Juneteenth of Buffalo, "marks the abolition of slavery and the triumph over oppression" and "is a testament to liberation, cultural heritage, and the enduring resilience of African Americans."

Buffalo State's commitment to diversity and inclusion is evident not only through its participation in celebrations like Juneteenth, but also through investment in growing academic programs like Africana Studies, the multidisciplinary study of Black liberation from the diverse perspectives of African people globally for the purpose of creating a future of justice for all. Since the university introduced the major in 2019, it has gone from zero to 26 majors and upward of 40 minors. The Introduction to Africana Studies course is so popular that "it could easily fill seven sections of 50 students per semester if circumstances permitted," said Marcus Watson, associate professor and current Africana Studies coordinator.

"At a time when the very life of Africana Studies is threatened by the current political movement to eradicate it, Buffalo State should be recognized and applauded for seeing our value and encouraging our growth and independence," Watson said. "This subject matter sparks a sense of purpose in young people because they're learning who they are for themselves and not just what to be for others."

"Africana Studies did not emerge from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives-our intellectual tradition and our presence on campuses across this country predate that framework by decades," added Naila Ansari Carbonell Catilo, associate professor and incoming Africana Studies coordinator. "As we mark Juneteenth this year, we see celebrating this holiday and investing in Africana Studies as deeply connected expressions of the same institutional value: that Black life, Black history, and Black futurity matter, and that Buffalo State is committed to being a place where every student can find themselves, feel welcomed, and thrive."

In honor of Juneteenth, Watson, Ansari Carbonell Catilo, and sophomore Africana Studies major Ava Fronckowiak gave a few moments of their time to discuss the significance of the holiday and its relationship to the relevant field of Africana Studies.

Marcus Watson

Can you explain the history of Juneteenth?
Marcus Watson: According to the mainstream narrative, Juneteenth is about a white man, Union General Gordon Granger, informing naive Africans in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865 that they were supposed to have been free two years prior when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. However, given what we now know about the creation and use by enslaved Africans of the clandestine communication network called the "grapevine telegraph," Black ancestors would have known about the Proclamation, suggesting something more nefarious was at play. Given most southern states proclaimed their independence from the United States between 1860 and 1861 and named the new formation the Confederate States of America, Lincoln was essentially trying to give directions to another country about its internal affairs. Like other slave-holding states of the Confederacy, Texas had no incentive to abide by the Emancipation Proclamation and used extreme violence and threats of violence to compel enslaved Africans in Galveston to continue their backbreaking labor even though they knew they'd been freed. In fact, white enslavers in Texas had plans to join forces with Maxamillian, the Emperor of Mexico appointed by France in 1864 to reconquer Mexico while the U.S. was distracted by its Civil War. Confederates hoped to join French imperial Mexico where they could continue the enslavement of African people in perpetuity. Accompanied by roughly 2,000 Union soldiers, including Black soldiers, General Granger enforced Lincoln's order against the will of the white enslavers and prevented them from allying with Maxamillian's Mexico.

Why is Juneteenth an important opportunity for celebration, education, and reflection?
MW: Juneteenth is Black people's time to celebrate their freedom and independence, just as July 4 is for everyone, and they hope everyone will join them in their festivities. It is hard to justify July 4 being Black people's only independence day when they know their ancestors were dragged into the newly independent country as chattel slaves. While July 4 reminds us of the potential to make America inclusive of all people, Juneteenth comes with no such equivocations for Black people about their value as free human beings.

Ava Fronckowiak: Juneteenth offers an opportunity for community outreach and unfiltered Black pride. It celebrates the progress made and inspires the next wave of community. It will always be an important holiday because it feels like tangible evidence of the progress Black movements have made towards reparations and liberation.

Naila Ansari Carbonell Catilo: There is something powerful about a holiday that centers Black joy and Black freedom without qualification. That centering matters, especially now, when the cultural and political climate makes that joy feel both urgent and necessary to protect. Juneteenth invites all of us, regardless of background, to ask what freedom truly means and who it has historically included.

MW: Juneteenth also raises questions that are essential to learning and growing as a people and a country: Are Black people free to be the Africans they are? As the late historian John Henrik Clarke reminded us, there were no Jamaicans, Haitians, or Black Americans captured and enslaved-only Africans. Do Black people represent a nation within a nation, in the same way Irish, German, and Chinese people, for instance, can celebrate their unique identities while also being proudly American? Or is there a strange and unique expectation for Black people that they alone must remove the last vestiges of their national character as Africans and assimilate inexorably into Americanness as a new kind of white people who happen to have more melanin? When General Granger's read General Order Number 3 to the enslaved Africans of Galveston, they learned the word "slave" would be replaced by "wage laborer" and that they must return to their previous plantations and work as such. Was this true freedom, or a new kind of bondage? Such questions represent what haunts our country to this day: the obsession with equating blackness with criminality, which justifies all manners of inhumane treatment of people who are supposed to feel protected and belonging as citizens. Juneteenth raises these questions with the potential to realize the American ideal that all people are created equal.

NACC: For Black communities, Juneteenth has always been an occasion not just to remember but also to celebrate life, creativity, kinship, and survival. Education about Juneteenth gives students and the community at large a framework for understanding how that history lives in the present and what it asks of us going forward.

Naila Ansari Carbonell Catilo

What role does Africana Studies play in helping students understand the history, culture, and experiences that Juneteenth commemorates?
MW: Africana Studies is not about slavery or history; it's about using an African-centered lens to bring healing to the insidious divisions haunting humanity. Whether it's society convincing us to place man over woman, straight over gay, mind over emotion, humans over earth, capital over labor, or white over black, we are riddled with incentives to be distrustful, hateful, unhappy, paranoid, and lonely by forces that feed off the confusion of the masses to enrich the few. Given that the modern world has made whiteness represent "normal" to the extent that its counter anchor of Blackness represents "abnormal," hearing what Blackness has to say about anything and everything is the ultimate perspective. That is what Africana Studies is about-not to make people feel guilty or angry, but rather empowered to grasp what is eroding our ability to get along to have a real chance at healing across the lines that were artificially made to divide us.

NACC: Africana Studies is not a passive transfer of information but rather an active, embodied encounter with truth. When we teach Juneteenth through an African-centered lens, we restore Black people to the role of protagonists in their own liberation. That reframing is not revisionist; it is more complete.

MW: The Eurocentrism of the mainstream view is palpable because it uses all the usual stereotypes: Africans are helplessly naive, a white man is the savior, and Africans are to be forever grateful. Even the name "Juneteenth"-as if Black people are too ignorant to know the exact day-plays on the stereotype of "unintelligent Black people." By positioning students to see what Juneteenth looks like from the Africans' perspective, Africana Studies brings historical accuracy to the picture, which helps students make better sense of our world today-for example, why many white conservatives may subconsciously view Black people as confiscated property and despise them for not staying "in their place," or remaining loyal to their white "saviors," or how white enslavers in Virginia and the Carolinas dragged enslaved Africans with them to Texas during the Civil War, forming the backdrop for why Texas is the state with the highest population of Black people; or why there are murmurings to this day of Texas leaving the Union and forming its own country. The Black perspective of Africana Studies uncovers the hidden DNA of the country and the world, bringing unmatched accuracy to the study of criminal justice, business, psychology, and more, which in turn increases our ability to be truthful and heal.

NACC: For students who have spent their educational lives encountering themselves only through someone else's narrative, that shift can be genuinely transformative.

AF: Africana Studies is not only one of the few academic spaces that asks you to reexamine the lens through which you view the world, but also an area of study that challenges you on a deeply personal level, regardless of what race you are. It's a crucial part of understanding Juneteenth because it gives you the full context of why we celebrate and why our celebrations look the way they look. Juneteenth is an incredibly complex and layered holiday with equal parts pain and joy. Africana Studies is a guiding hand for you to hold while you navigate.

Why is it important for Buffalo State to continue to invest in and grow the Africana Studies program?
NACC: The program has demonstrated remarkable momentum and growth. Our Introduction to Africana Studies course generates demand for learning what has been historically erased and dismissed. We have developed Eastside community internships, co-created a Ghana Study Abroad in partnership with the Department of Fashion and Textile Technology, and built a learning community for first-year students with evidence of positive retention outcomes. Additionally, we have several programs both on- and off-campus to educate the community, while promoting the unit through various media outlets. Together with the Educational Opportunity Program, we host "The Return," a homecoming event that draws Black alumni from across departments and disciplines. Africana Studies has become a touchstone for belonging on this campus, even for those who never majored with us.

MW: Students report feeling lonely or purposeless. Africana Studies is a remedy because it is within our disciplinary definition to foster a culture of community. What makes our approach compelling to students of all backgrounds is our dedicated faculty, high quality courses, and our subject matter-restoring connection among diverse humans and between humanity and the earth.

Buffalo State representatives at the 2026 Juneteenth Parade (Ava Fronckowiak pictured bottom left corner).

AF: Many students come to Buffalo State because it is affordable or because of the specific major and stumble upon a thriving, diverse community that they might not have expected. Africana Studies is ready with a guiding hand for those kids who have something to say. The faculty nurtures that spark and watches it grow into a fire. The work that is done within the program sets an even higher standard for everyone, including administration and the Buffalo community. Every student who walks that stage with an Africana Studies degree is walking with an extensive knowledge of how to turn pain into hope and progress, and the ability to minister that hope to anyone who will listen.

How do Buffalo State's student population and urban location make its commitment to programs like Africana Studies particularly valuable?
MW: Black and Brown students make up over 50 percent of the student body. Our culture of belonging is critically relevant.

NACC: These students arrive looking for themselves in the curriculum, faculty, and campus culture. Africana Studies is often the first place they encounter a genuine and affirming reflection of their full humanity.

MW: It's also the first chance non-Black students have to finally understand their Black and Brown peers with whom they wish to relate beyond the debilitating stereotypes and distrust of previous generations.

NACC: The same spirit that carried our communities through Juneteenth-the refusal to be erased, the insistence on joy and self-determination-is the spirit that animates the Africana Studies program. We are creating space for Black voices, scholarship, and joy to be centered rather than marginalized. We are proud of what we have built and energized by what is still possible.

How does Buffalo State's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion align with the values and lessons associated with Juneteenth?
NACC: Juneteenth reminds us that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not abstract institutional values; they are living commitments that should be practiced and renewed. Juneteenth is about insisting that Black people's freedom, joy, and belonging are worth celebrating publicly and without reservation. That is precisely what meaningful DEI work looks like in action. Buffalo State's commitment to these values is most visible not in language alone, but in whether students feel genuinely seen, supported, and challenged when they arrive on this campus. Africana Studies operationalizes that commitment every day, through how we teach, mentor, and build community across lines of difference.

AF: Buffalo State's commitment to diversity and inclusion aligns with the Juneteenth value of endurance through communal support. For every misstep, there is an unbridled desire to learn from that misstep and utilize lessons learned to push the entire campus forward. Buffalo State has proven time and time again that its biggest strength is the community behind it, which is what Juneteenth is about.

Juneteenth photos by Buffalo State Office of Institutional Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; Watson and Ansari Carbonell Catilo photos by Buffalo State Marketing & Communications.