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When a group of Black community leaders came together to film a video in Whatcom County about Juneteenth, the mood was often somber. Director and editor Remy Styrk said a lot of trauma surfaced in the space while filming.

“It became a space of heaviness, but it was collective heaviness,” said the 23-year-old, New Jersey-based Black filmmaker and musician, who has a family connection in Ferndale.

Juneteenth, which falls on June 19, is the commemoration of the ending of slavery in the U.S. Last year, President Joe Biden declared it a national holiday. 

The result of those moments of heaviness is the 10-minute Juneteenth Video Project, to be shown in some local classrooms ahead of the end of the school year. Only Ferndale and Mount Baker school districts have signed on so far, but Anya Milton, who is Styrk’s cousin and the executive director of the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce, said she sent an invitation to discuss the project to every superintendent in the county. The video will also be available online on June 13.