Actually, it's none of the above, although it does have a little something to do with independence. After President Lincoln freed the slaves in 1862, it took a little while for the news to trickle down. The last American slaves of Galveston, Texas, found out they had been freed three years later, on June 19, 1865--Juneteenth, for short.

Which obliges us to ask why, when stores push Halloween masks in August and Secretary's Day is programmed on every boss' Palm Pilot, the anniversary of the freeing of the slaves--one of our country's pivotal moments--gets less press than a seedling on Arbor Day.

Working to change that is Morning Nyemah Sunday Hettleman, a community activist and radio personality who launched Waverly's National Juneteenth Museum in 1995 and has organized the city's Juneteenth Celebration (which kicks off this year on June 19 and runs until the 29th) every year since 1989.

"I had the first celebration in Harlem Park, and really thought that all of Baltimore was going to turn out to celebrate this wonderful thing that I had found," Hettleman recalls. "And they yawned."

Since its inauspicious start, Juneteenth Maryland has grown to attract thousands of participants, an operating board of five professionals, and scores of volunteers. This year's scheduled events include a meet-and-greet with descendants of Harriet Tubman at the Mount Clare Museum House, a tour of a plantation home, a healthy soul-food cookoff, an Underground Railroad tour of Baltimore, and performances and seminars by musicians, local historians, and authors.

"I saw an awful lot of depression when I came back to Baltimore [after living in Hawaii] in 1988," Hettleman says. "I thought maybe people would stand up for themselves more if we got this issue of slavery out of the way. We weren't talking about it--we hadn't explained what, when, where, how, and why. We needed to find out why it was happening to us at that point, who were the other people it was happening to, and how we could not let that happen to us again."

Hettleman also hoped to stanch the flow of racism.

"I wanted us to understand that, when we got out of slavery, all white folks aren't bad. They aren't all good, but they aren't all bad," she says. "There were folks who were not of color who were an integral part of the abolition of slavery in America. The Quakers were our staunch supporters--then and now today."

The Juneteenth Maryland celebration is designed to appeal to everyone from children to dancers to Civil War buffs.

"There's a level for a person who just wants to come there, drink some beer, eat some food, listen to some music, and there's a level for the person who just wants to see the stuff," Hettleman says. "Then there's another level for a person who wants to be challenged by information. We have all of that going on."

For those not satisfied by the festival alone, Hettleman's Juneteenth Museum, a "museum without walls," contains exhibits on Juneteenth, Maryland and slavery, Islam and slavery, and Christianity and slavery that are sent out to interested schools and organizations.

"A lot of museums have First Thursdays. I would go there, and there was no one who looked like me," Hettleman says. "And I said, well, if they won't come to the museum, we'll let the museum come to them."

The exhibits include a trunk show of typical slave clothing and period games for children, historical documents, and photos of slaves. Other than a picture of Kunta Kinte's son on loan from the Islamic Museum of Washington, D.C., the items in the museum were entirely researched, located, and assembled by Hettleman, with assistance from photographer/historian Monroe Fredericks of Heritage Postcards and Tours and Eva Slezak of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

"It's a growth process for the museums here in Baltimore to work with small neighborhood museums, or even to work with African-Americans," Hettleman says. "That's why we [African-Americans] opened our own museum [the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, scheduled to open in summer 2004] downtown--because we needed it. They only brought us out on Black History Month."

Hettleman is also responsible for other community initiatives, including the Black Living Legends program, which recognizes people working to improve the community, and Urban Earth Day.

"The Black Living Legends program recognizes that while politicians like to help us, they aren't the only ones. There are people who live on your street, on your block, doing things to make Baltimore a stronger city, and I wanted to salute them," Hettleman says.

Hettleman launched Urban Earth Day in 1995. "I was just so pissed at white folks for this Earth Day thing," she comments. "They were trying to save the whales, but black kids were dying from lead paint."

Born in Anne Arundel County, the outspoken Hettleman was raised in Baltimore and Key West, Fla. After a brief stint as a civilian civil-rights monitor for the Washington, D.C., police, she joined the Navy--"I still can't swim, OK?"--then settled in Hawaii, where she worked as a housing activist, taught English as a second language, and ran a catering business.

"The thing I like about Hawaii is that everyone hates each other equally," Hettleman says. "Filipinos hate the Samoans hate the haole hate the Popolos, so you wind up with a level playing field. What matters is: Can you give me what you said you would give me on time?"

When Hettleman returned to Baltimore in 1988, she was struck by the difference.

"I really didn't have a clue of where to live or where to go in Baltimore," Hettleman says. "I knew Baltimore was still divided into black and white, but I didn't know which was the black part, which was the white part, which was the safe black part, and which was the unsafe black part. Although, now there is no such thing as the safe black or white part--there's just problems all around."

But Hettleman believes in, and works toward, the possibility for change. For now, she'd like to see the National Juneteenth Museum given permanent housing and a full-time staff. Eventually, she would like to see it expand into a global museum of human rights.

"At the time we were talking about freeing the slaves in America, we were also talking about no longer beating your wife, no longer shanghaiing sailors, parents not harming their children," Hettleman says. "They were talking about the rights of human beings all over."

And in a bitter irony, the truth is that the celebration that has educated Charm City natives about the end of slavery for almost 15 years got its start with a racial slur.

"Someone called me a nigger," Hettleman says. "At first I was shocked--I laughed. Then I was mad, and then I just started crying. You go all the way around the world, you come home, and someone calls you a nigger for the first time. So I said, OK, let the education begin."

The Juneteenth Maryland celebration will be held June 19 to 29 throughout the Baltimore area. For more information, call the National Juneteenth Museum at (410) 467-2724 or the Mount Clare Museum House at (410) 837 3262.