An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 6/19/2024 (Juneteenth)
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"Juneteenth is much larger than me; I'm just a small part of it, and I appreciate people's thanking me about designing the flag, which represents something much larger than itself. It's a flag about humanity. It's a flag about people who accomplished a lot, even though they went through a lot. It means an awakening."
Meet "Boston Ben" Haith, artist, activist, community organizer, and original designer of the Juneteenth flag. Born in 1942 Connecticut, Haith graduated from Stamford and travelled first to Ohio and then to Los Angeles. A short stint in the U.S. Army led him to Europe and then to New York, but he ultimately settled in Boston, where he not only married and raised a family, but also opened an advertising agency and became a community activist.
Naming the Blizzard of '78 as his starting point, Haith was incensed by the city's unannounced dumping of snow in a park in his neighborhood, and organized neighbors and other locals to raise formal objections. From there his talents found their way into community anti-crime initiatives and he became an outspoken critic of overreaching law enforcement. He ran for office in 1983 and again in 1985 for a seat on the City Council (District 7, a primarily Black constituency); and also as an advocate for the elderly, and also as a case manager at the New England Center for Homeless Veterans.
As a thought-provoking contrast --and perhaps doubly important to note in that Juneteenth also takes place during Pride Month-- Haith is also on record as having (at least, at one time) been staunchly opposed to any form of legalized same-sex relationships. In 1983 he published several editorials criticizing a gay couple who were operating a foster home in Roxbury; drawing sufficient attention in the press that then-governor Michael Dukakis intervened and removed two children from the home. Such was the intensity of Haith's op-ed pieces that the Roxbury Highlands Neighborhood Association took steps to distance themselves from him. In more recent years Haith's position on same-sex marriage would appear to have shifted somewhat; in a 2022 interview he opined that "Sometimes you've got to get out of the way of it, so that's what I've done. I'm not in the way of any group of people trying to improve their lives. I'm trying to improve the lives of people impacted by violence, that's primarily what my interest is right now. When you move on in life, things change, so maybe I've become more philosophical than I used to be."
In 1997, while still living in Boston, Haith came up with the original design of the Juneteenth flag --which would later be tweaked and adjusted by illustrator Lisa Jeanne Graf. Featuring a Lone Star at its center (representing Texas, the very last state to formally end slavery), the flag's color scheme favors the familiar red, white, and blue, but also incorporates an added "nova" effect, symbolizing a new day of freedom. Haith was present when the flag was first flown in 2000, at Boston's Roxbury Heritage State Park --in a ceremony featuring performers dressed in period costume as Harriet Tubman and the Colored Ladies of the 54th Regiment (Massachusetts Glory Brigade). In 2007 Graf added the significant date of June 19, 1865 to the flag's design. Both Haith and Graf are founding members of the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation.
"I heard about [Juneteenth] when I was a youth, visiting my aunt in Virginia. I heard the word and it somehow stayed in my memory. When I heard it in Boston, I said it's something I better look into. It turns out more people were aware of Juneteenth in the south than in the north."
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