“They didn’t educate me in Allentown High School about black people,” Disley Mendez, a past president of the Black Student Union at William Allen High School said.

“They said we were slaves and that Martin Luther King came in and saved the day. They didn’t tell me we were descended from kings and queens.”

The recent high school graduate was speaking June 26 at Resurrected Life Community Church in Allentown as a crowd of about 125 gathered on the North Ninth Street campus of the church to celebrate Juneteenth.

Originally scheduled for June 19, the event was postponed due to threatening weather.

Juneteenth memorializes the date of June 19, 1865 when, months after the end of the Civil War, news came to slaves in Texas they were free. The date now seems on track to gain status as a legally recognized holiday.

The crowd, a mix of black, Latino and white men and women and children, were mostly wearing masks against the spread of the coronavirus and were practicing social distancing.

“We stand at this place at this time to declare: We done dying! We done dying! We done dying!” Pastor Dr. Greg Edwards of the Resurrected Life Church extolled in resonant tones, his voice reaching out to the farthest attendee.

Edwards then led the crowd in a call and response chorus recounting the lengthy list of those who have died at the hands of police departments around the country. Edwards ended his litany of names with Elijah McClain, 23, who died Aug. 24, 2019, shortly after being in the custody of Aurora, Colo., police.

“For too long,” Edwards said, “justice has meant ‘Just Them’!”

He said Allentown is 71 percent people of color, and “The city must now be held accountable for its racist past. People around the world are seeing what people in our backyards refuse to see: Black lives matter!”