Juneteenth 2025

To mark this Juneteenth, Mike spoke with Hamden Black History Committee members Deborah Moxam and Evans Simmons about what the Committee does for the community as well as the library’s upcoming Juneteenth Read-In. Mike also talked to author Jill Marie Snyder about her research into the lives of Black Americans, both pre- and post-Civil War.

Transcript

Michael Pierry: Hello, and welcome to the Hamden Library Podcast. I am your host, Michael Pierry, and on this episode, we are celebrating Juneteenth. In honor of this federal holiday, I spoke with Hamden Black History Committee members Deborah Moxam and Evans Simmons about what the committee does for the community, as well as the library's upcoming Juneteenth Read-In. 
 
 

I also talked to author Jill Marie Snyder about her research into the lives of Black Americans, both pre- and post-Civil War. To paraphrase what Jill says during that interview: June 19th, 1865, wasn't the end of slavery in America, but it is an important day because it reminds us that slavery was an institution from the beginning, even before we became the United States of America, and its legacy continues to shape us. 
 
 

And as Deb, Evans, and I spoke about, history is not just a series of events that happened a long time ago. It's everything that shapes the reality of our present moment. With that said, let's listen first to my talk with Jill Marie Snyder. Jill Marie Snyder is the author of Dear Mary, Dear Luther: A Courtship in Letters, a rare collection of African American love letters from the 1930s. 
 
 

Those love letters happen to be those of her parents Retired from a corporate career, Jill has a BA in urban studies from the University of Connecticut and an MA in communication from Fairfield University. She's currently researching and writing a book about the experiences of African American women during the Revolutionary War. 
 
 

Our theme for this year's read-in, Freedom to Read, is inspired by her work on this topic. Jill, welcome.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Thank you. It's great to be with you.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Great to be with you. So let's just dive right in. Let's talk about Juneteenth. Why is it... Why is Juneteenth important and what does it mean to you?  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Well, I think it's important, first of all, to just acknowledge that slavery existed and remind people that it was an institution that started in 1619 and officially ended, you know, 1800s, and people remained in different forms of bondage after that. 
 
 

So it's important to acknowledge it and I think to celebrate the idea of freedom and remind everyone of how dear freedom is.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yes. That's so true what you said because, like I was saying before we started this interview, I was researching just, you know, in my ignorance, I was just like, "Was it really... 
 
 

Was that really the day that everyone became free?" And I read that it wasn't, so I was just like, it's so interesting. You know, America has all these layers. Like, you think everything is just, like, black and white one way, and it's always... It's always... There's always more to the story.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: There's always more to the story, and there's always people that bend the law as far as they can to get away with what they wanna get away with. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Oh, yeah. So tell me a little bit about your involvement with this year's Juneteenth Read-In  
 
 

and this year's theme of Reading is Freedom.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Well for Reading is Freedom, I... That came to mind for me: when I was very young child, I encountered racism, and my mother, her response was to take me to the library when I was only about four years old to get my own library card. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: And the librarian said I could have my own card if I could write my own name, and apparently my mother knew that 'cause she trained me how to write my name. And she steered me to the section of children's books on Black history, and so I read about, you know, Black history heroes at a very young age. 
 
 

And we would talk about racism, because she had to deal with it. And so it was... It made me f- it freed me from feeling inferior in any way, or that if other people had opinions about me, that I don't have to internalize those opinions. And I didn't have to... Also didn't have to be In a constant state of anger about what other people felt, you know, that I could just honor myself and love myself and not be bothered by what other people might think about me or say to me. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: That's amazing, and what a great story. I mean, I think, all of us who work in the library will be uplifted by that story. So yeah, so you're actually working on this book about women during... African American women, I'm sorry. African American women during the Revolutionary War. 
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: And I understand that's also what you're going to be talking about during the read-in this year.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Yes. My working title for the book is Yearning to Be Free, because many of the stories that I've found of women in this era was documentation of them escaping. They were... They would take advantage of battles and the chaos of war and escape from plantations, and many ended up being taken to Nova Scotia by the British military, where they would be, uh, mostly live out free lives, although even that got complicated. 
 
 

And so the, there's a long, a wide variety of stories, but what I'll be reading for the read-in... there was a woman named Judith Lines who was married to a man named John Lines, who was a soldier in the war, and he wrote her a letter that she saved long after he passed away, and she applied for his pension, and she used the letter that she received from her husband as documentation that they were married. 
 
 

And so the letter has been preserved in government records, and it's the only known letter of a Black soldier that's been preserved. It's a really, it's a very, it's a wonderful letter. It's a husband letter. It's a lover letter.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: It's really amazing. I can't wait to share it with everyone. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Wow, that's really mind-blowing, honestly. So speaking of love letters, how did you end up publishing a whole book of your parents' letters to each other?  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: So, when I was a teenager, I just happened to come across my mother with all these letters spread out, and she explained to me that her courtship was mostly through letters. 
 
 

She lived in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he had... He was also born, but he moved to New York City, and this is in the Depression years in the '30s. So he moved to New York City to find work. And so they'd been dating a while before he left, and so they just started writing letters, and they start out very friendly. 
 
 

My father talks about walking on the beach and y- seeing the ocean for the first time and, you know, just having a great time, a bachelor in New York in the '30s. You know, a lot of people that we know now that are famous were just getting started, like Ella Fitzgerald, and he would be able to go to a nightclub, a little, in Harlem and hear her sing. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Wow.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Yeah. And so they just wrote these for about a year and a half. The letters were very casual and friendly, and then they start to turn to get more, like, very gradually more romantic over time.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: But I felt I had permission to write it because, my mother one time just kind of uttered, you know, she had been thinking about the letters and thought they'd make a nice book. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Hmm.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: And so after she passed away, I never thought about the letters in all the years. But as I found them with her belongings after she passed away and wrestled with what to do with the letters and finally decided that I would publish them as a book mainly for family, you know?  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. 
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: 'Cause they're a, you know, great documentation of-  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Oh, yeah ...  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: of the times in the 1930s, and you sort of get immersed in what life was going, what was going on in those days leading up to World War II. And so, yeah, a lot of people tell me that they have letters from their father or grandfather [who] was a soldier in World War II-  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah 
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: and they have his letters home, but the letters that-  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Went to him ...  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: that went to him were lost.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: You know, but I have both. I have both.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: I have both of them. So yeah, it's pretty amazing, and I think what I learned, people fall in love in different ways, you know? And these two people fell in love through letters and had a wonderful marriage, 32 years, until my father passed away. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: That's really nice. So is there anything else that you'd wanna share about the book that you're currently working on?  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Oh, God, there's so much. What's really been illuminated for me is how the experience of enslaved women varied depending on where the individual was enslaved. In New England, a lot of women were the only slave in the household, on small farms in rural areas, and they had a wide variety of jobs. 
 
 

Normally, the wife cooked, but the enslaved person pretty much did everything else: laundry, tending the kitchen garden, taking care of the farm animals. And one of the prized skills of enslaved women, many from Africa were experts at weaving. And so African women were expected to spend a few hours each evening weaving fabric for the family's clothes. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Wow.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Yeah, and that was something in New England that was a little bit more particular to New England. In New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, there were a lot of urban people enslaved in urban areas, and you may not know if a person was indentured, free, or enslaved. People moved about and did their business, and there was a mix of statuses in those areas. 
 
 

I guess one of the most interesting, and this was in the news, but it really, as I dug into it, found it quite amazing that the Georgetown situation where they enslaved people. The Jesuits enslaved people. So it was like everybody was in on this game from all walks of life were taking advantage of enslaving African people. 
 
 

The South, we think of cotton as the main product in the South, but in colonial times in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, the main product was tobacco.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Right, yeah.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: And in Georgia and South Carolina, the main products were rice and indigo.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: So the cotton, you know, our Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, and that came much later. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah, so it's really quite different depending on where you were. So, speaking of the experience of slavery and the trauma of that, you've been involved with Community Healing Network since it was founded in 2006. Can you tell me a little bit about that?  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Sure. I was a founding board member of Community Healing Network. 
 
 

I'm not a board member at this point in time, but it's a very important organization. Without being actually conscious of it, many of us carry the trauma that our parents and our ancestors experienced through... I won't- I don't wanna get too scientific, but there's an area called epigenetics where your trauma can be passed from one generation to another, and they found this not just in Black communities, but in other communities that have experienced trauma, that it becomes internal in your system and you're not even aware that you're carrying trauma. 
 
 

And so the Community Healing Network works with psychologists to put on workshops and other types of programs to help people basically just talk, but in a structured way so that people aren't overwhelmed with their feelings, and just, and helping people to reach a place where they can talk about what they've experienced in their own life, where they can connect it to the trauma of people. 
 
 

Sadly, a lot of the pain is passed on from generation to generation, and so part of it is finding forgiveness for whatever has happened in the past. 'Cause not all the trauma's inflicted by the broader white community. It's the challenge of why we need the Community Healing Network is it gets internalized, and then people act out in ways that are harmful to others. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. I mean, that happens a lot with trauma, is that people internalize and then they act out in different ways, or they're just self-destructive in different ways. And healing from that can be difficult, but it's incredibly important to do.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Yeah. They, and these psychologists do a wonderful job. I just, I've seen people just transform before my eyes in a day-long workshop, and not realizing-  
 
 

Michael Pierry: What they were... 
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: what they were carrying. Yeah.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah. It's amazing. Thank you for talking about that. What's next for you after this new book comes out?  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: I have a couple more books, I think, in me that I wanna work on. The story of Lucy and Lois Tritton is fascinating. They were the last two enslaved persons who were auctioned on the New Haven Green, and the mother, Lucy, shared a lot of information with her daughter, Lois, that's been recorded in newspaper interviews. 
 
 

So we have, we know a lot about their story. They were taken from Africa and brought to the island of St. Thomas, and then they were taken to England, and Nova Scotia, and New Haven. So I've done some presentations about them, but I wanna put it all together in a book, because it really highlights how the Atlantic world was connected through slavery. 
 
 

So that's on my mind. And then there's a person I haven't had a chance to do a lot of research on, but he's quite interesting. His name is Jacob Oson. He was born in Woodbridge in the 1700s. At some point he was freed, and he worked on ships- We found his name in the Mystic database as a sailor. And then he landed in New Haven, and he sought for about 20 years, he sought to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Oh.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: But they kept denying him that until finally they told him he could be ordained if he would go to Africa as a missionary, but he couldn't stay here. And sadly, he died before... he was actually ordained, but he died before he could make the journey to Africa. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Wow.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: So I really wanna dig in more to his story. 
 
 

So there's a lot of fascinating Black history in this area-  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah ...  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: that people don't know, and it's ... I like stories that illuminate the broader economic and social environment of slavery, and how it was connected between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: It's so fascinating how everybody's personal story kind of does end up reflecting the-  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Yeah 
 
 

Michael Pierry: broader machinations and goings-on of society and, and politics, and, you know, economics really.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Yep.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: I mean, that's kinda the weirdest, for me, part of slavery is just how it was just really just economics.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: It's all about money.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Yeah. All about money. And women, female slaves often were... it's, you know, hard to say this, but they were often valued at a higher level than men. 
 
 

Mm-hmm. Because women, we reproduce.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: And so, it, that's another really stark part of the whole slavery history.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Yeah. It's a tough thing to think about.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: It's a tough thing to think about, for sure. Well, I just wanna thank you so much for coming down here and talking to me about Juneteenth and your books. 
 
 

This is really amazing, fascinating stuff, great work that you do.  
 
 

Jill Marie Snyder: Thank you  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Evans Kennard Simmons began his career in medicine in 1989 as an army combat medic. Following his retirement from the army in 2003, Evans continued his career as a physician assistant at Yale New Haven Hospital, where he currently practices on the colon and rectal surgery and bariatric and minimally invasive surgery teams. Through his involvement in the community, Evans is committed to confronting and removing the social obstacles that prevent access to care. 
 
 

Debra Moxam is a dedicated entrepreneur and community leader with a passion for helping others achieve success. In 2013, she co-founded ISOE, In Search of Excellence Commercial Capital, an experienced business finance and mortgage brokerage company focused on advising small businesses on development, growth strategies, and securing financing. 
 
 

Beyond her work with ISO, Debra plays an active role in WISE Network, a women's organization committed to empowering women. Deborah also serves as the chair of the Hamden Black History Committee, where she leads initiatives to educate the Hamden and Greater New Haven communities about the rich history and contributions of African Americans. 
 
 

So Deborah and Evans, uh, thank you for joining me today on the podcast. How are you?  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: We're wonderful, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: We're, we're well.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Great. So we're talking today because we're coming up on a very important day this month of June, Juneteenth. And I wanted to ask both of you, why do you feel it's important to celebrate Juneteenth? 
 
 

And is there anything that you'd like our listeners to know about this holiday?  
 
 

Evans Simmons: Well, Mike, I'll start off. You know, normally I've always been taught that it is ladies first, but in this particular instance- ... I'll start us off. And on behalf of Debbie and I, and Debbie will speak to it as well, we really appreciate this opportunity to be able to talk with you in reference to Juneteenth about the Hamden Black History Committee. 
 
 

But most of all, I think just really having just a nice cohesive conversation about two things that are very important to us, what you talked about with the factors of Juneteenth and, you know, as it's coming up, and we're gonna be having a celebration there at the library, which we'll talk about a little bit more as we go along. 
 
 

Juneteenth is vastly important, you know, to our overall society, and it's been something that has been celebrated here in Hamden at least for the, as our committee being a part of it, for the last couple of years. We're coming up on the second annual celebration of that, and we'll be doing a read-in, and again, we'll talk more about that. 
 
 

But I think it carries vast importance just by the breakdown being Juneteenth on June 19th of 1865 is where, you know, the slaves in Galveston learned of their freedom. And you just think about all the history that we know about with the Emancipation Proclamation and that being in 1863 and now in 1865, they're learning of their freedom and all of the challenges that go along with that. 
 
 

I think it's a great educational opportunity to be able to talk about it, to have some cohesive conversation around it, but also just to learn how to be comfortable with the things about our education.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Deborah, did you have anything to add?  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: You know, I just wanted to piggyback off, and just share that given our current environment that we're in, Mike, it is very pivotal, very important to remember how far we have come and to celebrate our ancestors and those that have gone before us and have worked hard to put us in the position where we are today. 
 
 

Our current local community has done a wonderful job at the library, and they are highlighting all of our Black ancestors, and we are so very proud of that.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Absolutely. So I just wanna take a moment to acknowledge that Deb, you're the chairwoman of the board of the Hamden Black History Committee. 
 
 

Deborah Simmons: Yes.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: So what should listeners know about the committee and the work it's doing? And also if they wanted to get involved in that work, is there a way for them to do that?  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: It's a great question. Thank you, Michael, for allowing us the opportunity to share our committee with you and with the community. 
 
 

Our Hamden Black History Community, the committee began in 2004 after our esteemed founder, Martha Walker, was approached by Carl Amento, the then town , mayor, and he asked for a Black... She asked him for a Black history program in Hamden. He turned around and asked her to host a Martin Luther King, and the Hamden Black History Committee group was formed back then. 
 
 

Since then our mission is to honor the lives of our past ancestors, to share the rich history and experience of African Americans with the Hamden community, and to bring awareness of their contributions to the growth and greatness of this nation. And we celebrate a people who have risen from slavery to first-class citizenship. 
 
 

We believe, Mike, that through education and understanding, diversity can lead to a more harmonious and unified community. So we generally have two major programs throughout the year, Mike. That is the Martin Luther King program in January, held annually, and we just celebrated our 20th year anniversary. 
 
 

Then we have the Black History program celebrated the last Friday of each February annually. And we are coming up on our annual fundraiser, which will be held on Tuesday, June 17th at Lynon's Restaurant in Hamden, Connecticut. So we wanna share with our listeners today that we are very proud. For the past 20 years, we have been able to fund our own book awards through individual donors. 
 
 

We started with one book award, Mike, for $500 And this past Wednesday at the Hamden High School Awards, we awarded eight $1,000 book awards.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Wow. That's amazing.  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: Yes, and there's actually one $2,000 book award.  
 
 

We do up to 10 book awards annually, Mike, so we have come a long way. And it is our hope that we align ourselves with more local organizations so that we can secure larger corporate grants and sponsorships. 
 
 

Our goal, Mike, is to be able to fund $5,000 per student per year for four years. Wouldn't that be great?  
 
 

Michael Pierry: That would be spectacular. So yeah, is there a way for people to join? How do they get involved with this?  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: If you'd like to get involved, we are seeking supporters. We need supporters. We need brand ambassadors that will come and support our events, will market and will get the word out there so that other organizations... a lot of people don't know we exist in town, Mike.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: So we need people to spread the word, to cheerlead for us, and to get us so that we can increase our fundraising efforts and make our ultimate goal of 5,000 per student for four years a reality. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: Reach out to our, either our website, which is [hamdenblackhistorycommittee.com], or they can give us a call, or email.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Great. Evans, I heard that you were quite instrumental in getting the first Hamden Library Juneteenth Read-In off the ground. So what was it like to plan that event, and how did you feel about how it went afterwards? 
 
 

Evans Simmons: Well, I will tell you, working with Melissa is an absolute, um... Let's see. We could use the word dream. We could use the word win the lottery. We could use the word it's just, it is just an absolute pleasure. Her passion for the aspects of education, her passion for the aspects of being able to just... 
 
 

I would think just to use the word equality is probably one of the best words, is in the aspects of just trying to do all of those things to make sure that not just kids but also adults are being able to be educated, to being able to utilize the library as a hub of that education. 
 
 

When I grew up, that's where I was at. You know, if I went to the library, it was being quiet, you know, it was a lot of shh.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: But I understood that, that that was the place that people were going as an overall... not as a silo, but a protective place for education. So normally, of course, read-ins, back to your question, read-ins are throughout our, throughout the United States, the month of February with Black History Month, they use the read-ins. 
 
 

And I loved that Melissa used that as a portion of our Juneteenth, and that was also during a time that, you know, when we actually came into this idea of doing this. Melissa had known of the Hamden Black History Committee through Martha Walker.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: And then as Deb had taken over leadership, that relationship, those partnerships that we always are looking for our committee to have, that's where the library came in. 
 
 

Melissa had reached out to Deb. Deb asked me to kind of be the leader upon that, and I was very happy to do that. And we were able to put together the read-in. The one thing that we did from last year was we put out the email through the website, you know, for the library, and people signed up, and we had some children to sign up. 
 
 

We had some political officials also to sign up as be readers. And then we had some discussion following it. And anything that you wanna improve upon, we put it, you know, we brought forth a committee for this beco- this coming year, and a lot of the readers from last year have been a part of the committee, and they were able to kinda tell us some of the areas that we could really help to improve. 
 
 

So now we have a robust list of readers for this year. We've been able to add a room where the readers are going to kind of hub themselves before they go out to read. They can have more of a discussion about what they're gonna be reading beforehand and after. We're also gonna have reader coaches or calmers, I think that's what the, the word that was utilized. Like for those who are a bit nervous about reading, there's gonna be someone there to help, you know, to let them know that they're gonna do fine, and that's, I think that's great. 
 
 

We have more now, more greeters coming as well, because when people come into the library, other than just them walking and trying to find, we really wanna kind of help to lead them to the areas where children are gonna be reading, where the adults are gonna be reading. So you can see just in this that we've been able this year to really refine the process to be a well-oiled machine, and last year I found it to be great. 
 
 

This year I anticipate it's gonna be even better. And in the years to come, I think again, it's going to be opportunity for the community to be able to be involved. It's something I think the library's gonna be able to continue to brand. But most importantly, we're bringing forth education. And when we have book bans and various other particular things going on in our society, you can ban a book, but you can't ban the factors of education. 
 
 

And being able to have this read-in, being able to bring the community together, I think again, it's gonna really emphasize the factors of education, the opportunity to share. And though it may say Juneteenth, and it's definitely a part of the factors of Black history, I want everyone to learn about Black history, right? 
 
 

Because just as we learn about any particular history when we're kids, Black history is intertwined, ingrained in any history that we have. So I think the read-in is gonna be excellent this year.  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: And Mike, I just wanted to share, I wanted to just insert. Last year at the Juneteenth read-in, I thoroughly enjoyed it. 
 
 

I brought a book from one of our local Hamden authors, and it was exciting for him to come and be a part of it, and his children were there to see his book being read. So it was a great opportunity, and I look forward to this, this year happening again.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: That's really nice. And you know, Evans, as you said, Black history is totally inter- I mean, Black history is American history. 
 
 

Evans Simmons: Right.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: You know? And everyone should know all that. And I am really grateful that you and other folks are able to bring that history to folks, and make sure that it's remembered, and that we continue to remember it. And this is like a great, this is like seeing the beginning of a great tradition, and that hopefully the library can, can carry it forward in the years to come.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: And Mike, I would tell you, thank you so much for that, is even in our readers last year, even in this year, there's diversity to our readers, right?  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: So people are selecting things that are robust in Black history, but they're not actually African American or Black. They're just choosing readings that they want to learn more about, right?  
 
 

So, and we use the word read-in, but you could use the word relationship-in, secure-in, anything that you wanna connect to the in, that means that we're all in this together. So, right? 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yeah.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: That's the big function.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Exactly. We are. And we're all connected through history as well.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: Right. Right.  
 
 

Deborah Simmons: Yes, Mike.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: So this year's read-in is on Saturday, June 21st, from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: And that'll be in the program room at Miller Memorial Library. Is there anything else that you wanna tell people...what to expect from this year's read-in? 
 
 

Deborah Simmons: I mean, you kind of really hit a lot of the points, but is there anything else you can tell people to look forward to?  
 
 

Evans Simmons: Um, I would say, I think the other portion is just please come out and it, 'cause you're, when you come out, you're supporting yourself. You're not just supporting the program, you're supporting yourself. 
 
 

We have a program going on, but any time that you're coming out, you're supporting yourself because everyone who comes out is supporting the community, and we're all within this community. It's not a sell point, it's an actual point to be able to learn something that day. Take it home, share it with your kids, share it with your family, share it with your friends. 
 
 

Because if we continue to share history, then we, it becomes all of ours and easy for us to understand, easy for us to embrace. But if we don't take that opportunity, then it always again becomes that thing that I need to learn that one day.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Mm-hmm.  
 
 

Evans Simmons: I need to learn a second language. But history is something that I have, I'm living each and every day. 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Yep, 100%. You know, the more you learn history, it opens up your mind in a lot of ways. It does. And really, in a way kind of makes the world make more sense. You know, why did this, why is this happening? Well, it's usually- 
 
 

Evans Simmons: Right ...  
 
 

Michael Pierry: because of something that happened before, so, you know, it's important. 
 
 

Deborah Simmons: So very true, Mike.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: So I wanna thank you both, Deb and Evans, for talking to me, and I hope to see you both on the 21st. I think it's gonna be amazing. And like I said, I hope it'll be a tradition in the library for many years to come. Thank you so much.  
 
 

That's all the time we have on this episode. 
 
 

Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time