Folks across North Alabama celebrated Juneteenth Wednesday.
The Scottsboro Boys Museum hosted an extra special event for the community to listen and learn.
Board Member William Hampton spoke at the celebration for all to hear.
"We've got to take care of each other," Hampton explained. "We must for the survival of mankind. And, even if you don't like someone, even if it's for the color of their skin, you all, let's respect one another."
Historians say June 19, 1865 is an important and often overlooked day in our nation's history. It's the day Union troops freed enslaved African Americans in Galveston Bay and across Texas.
It happened about two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Yet, Tuesday's celebration in Scottsboro focused on the segregation right in our backyard.
In 1931, two white women falsely accused nine young Black men of raping them aboard a freight train. The state tried and convicted the boys until the Supreme Court got involved and overturned their ruling.
Still, the proven innocent young men spent more than 100 years combined in jail for a crime they did not commit. Hampton says that's a wrong, that even all these years later, we must learn from and make right.
"Generations will reap what I sow," Hampton said quoting one of his favorite songs. "I can pass on a curse or a blessing to those I will never know."
To learn more about the Scottsboro Boys and to visit the museum yourself, you can visit their website .
In 1931, two white women falsely accused nine young black men of raping them aboard a freight train. The state tried and convicted the boys until the Supreme Court got involved and overturned their ruling.
