Mixed Race Day is celebrated on June 27 in Brazil as a reference to the twenty-seven mixed-race ("mestiço" in Portuguese) representatives elected during the 1st Conference for the Promotion of Racial Equality, which occurred in the city of Manaus, State of Amazonas, Brazil, from April 7 to 9, 2005. It also refers to the month of June, in which caboclo activist Helda Castro was registered as the only mixed-race representative in the 1st National Conference for the Promotion of Racial Equality, which was held in Brasília (June 30 to July 2, 2005) and was sponsored by the Government of Brazil.
Manaus established "Mixed Race Day" (Dia do Mestiço, in Portuguese) as an official day of the city on January 6, 2006. The recognition was adopted by other cities and states: 2006, by the Brazilian state of Amazonas and by the city of Boa Vista, in Roraima; 2007, by the state of Roraima and the state of Paraíba.
Mixed Race Day honors all those who possess multi-ethnic origins. It occurs three days after the Day of the Caboclo, honoring the first mixed-race Brazilian group (people of European and Amerindian ancestry).
Famous quotes containing the words mixed, race and/or day:
“But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward, the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ‘tis
whispered—down in hell”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“I will wait and watch till the day of David at last shall be finished, and wisdom no more fox-faced, and the blood gets back its flame.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)