Norwich — Friday’s Juneteenth ceremony blended a mixture of celebration, national and local history lessons and serious elements, with event speakers pledging to keep learning and keep trying to improve the country.

About 50 people of mixed races and ages gathered at the David Ruggles Freedom Courtyard outside City Hall on Friday morning to honor the Norwich resident who designed the national Juneteenth flag, to raise the flag and recognize recent artwork created by the fledgling Norwich Street Art Collective. The group presented an 8-foot-tall tri-panel structure, titled “Past, Present and Future,” depicting African American experiences in the United States and beyond.

Collective member Erica Brannen pointed out that the “future” panel features a blackboard at the base, where children can draw their own images of their goals for the future. The structure was painted in recent days at the Sikh Art Gallery in Norwich. Brannen said the group hopes to find a location in Norwich to display the tower.

Ben Haith, who is Black and 79 years old — “the same age as the president of the United States,” he reminds people — moved to Norwich in 2008. He was born in Stamford and lived in New York, Boston and elsewhere over the years; he is an Army veteran and used to work in marketing but now is retired. In Boston, he became active in the civil rights scene and realized there was no flag to symbolize Juneteenth, the now national and state holiday marking the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the last enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free.

Haith created the flag, a blue upper horizontal bar, a red lower bar, a five-point white star at the center surrounded by a jagged white circle. The flag first flew in Boston in 2000 and quickly became the national Juneteenth Flag.

Haith on Friday received the Daniel D. Jenkins II Memorial Award and a city proclamation for his work to gain recognition for Juneteenth as a holiday and for creating the flag. Haith said he was honored to receive the award named for a noted Black Norwich police officer and community activist. Haith said he worked extensively with Boston police to try to reduce violence and crime at all levels.

As America is coming to grips with systemic racism, Haith said Friday the nation also needs to recognize its “systemic criminal history,” which he said goes back to slavery as a criminal act. Violence flourished in the so-called Wild West, he said, and in organized crime, and it still flourishes today in domestic violence, youth street gangs and the growing number of mass shootings.

“How did we get here?” Haith said. “How can people think about going into a grocery store and being shot and killed and how that affects not only the community and the country, it affects the country’s image.”

Haith thanked Jenkins’ family members in attendance and expressed support for police who are facing “a difficult job with the violence in this country.”

Ceremony emcee Lashawn Cunningham, chairwoman of the NAACP Juneteenth Committee, started Friday’s ceremony by urging schools to teach African American history as part of regular curriculum starting in lower grades. She said for African Americans, slavery is only four or five generations back.

“This is a joyous celebration,” Cunningham said, “But I have to say that with our education system, I stand before you as a youth leader in this community, not asking but demanding that African American history with American history be taught in our schools, not when you get to high school, not as an elective, as it was for me when I got to high school and I had to choose whether or not I wanted to take it. But it starts in grade school and be taught.”

Friday’s ceremony launched a two-day celebration of Juneteenth in Norwich. Events continue Saturday with the 11 a.m. unveiling of the giant mural on the Broadway side wall of Castle Church at 4 Broadway, the first step in a plan to create Jubilee Park at the base of the mural. The artwork depicts James L. Smith, who escaped enslavement in Virginia in 1838 and settled in Norwich as a successful businessman and author, and Sarah Harris Fayerweather, a 19th century abolitionist and civil rights activist in Norwich.

On Friday night, the first Juneteenth Heroes and Sheroes Awards were presented to Castle Church Pastor Adam Bowles, local businessman Ashon Avent, Norwich Street Art Collective member Brannen, Janelle Posey-Green of DHW Athletics and Tiara Waters, who hosted an exposition of Black-owned businesses in February.

A Juneteenth Festival will be held from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday in the parking lot behind 241 Main St., co-sponsored by Global City Norwich.

Castle Church Pastor Bowles at Friday’s ceremony recounted highlights of a trip by five church members to retrace the path Smith and two companions took in 1838, fleeing the Virginia plantation on foot and by boat to reach Philadelphia. Bowles read passages from Smith’s autobiography and said the group even discovered an old dirt path through woodlands that Smith likely walked on during his journey.

“You can learn a lot from walking in someone else’s shoes,” Bowles said. “You can learn when you listen and when you empathize, when you care about someone else’s dream and not just your own.”

c.bessette@theday.com

Juneteenth flag

The Juneteenth flag’s creator Ben Haith explained the banner’s symbols and colors to WMTW Channel 8 News on Friday.

The white star represents both Texas — the Lone Star State — where Union soldiers delivered the news to Black slaves in Galveston that they were free in 1865, and represents the freedom of Black Americans in the 50 U.S. states. The burst, inspired by a nova or new star, represents a new beginning for Black Americans in Galveston and elsewhere, while the arc likewise represents a new horizon and opportunities for Black Americans.

The red, white and blue represent the American flag, a reminder that slaves and their descendants were and are Americans, even if they are still fighting for equality and justice.