So before I even get started just let me thank
Mr.. Tom Keener and the city of Allen and the Allen public library staff are setting up really such a wonderful event and
I also want to say a special. Thank you to my pastor Dr.
WL Stafford senior who [Cancelled] Wednesday night Bible study
so that my church family could come
tonight, and I did not expect doctors [span] to be here, so I'm really honored as a
historian and as a human [being] to have a
piece of Living history
here um tonight um
so as a historian I love
Nothing [more] than just talking about the past the people and events that have shaped um the world that we live [in] today
so in teaching and writing about African-American history in particular and
us history in General
We are really blessed to be here today because this june teen
2013 is a very special Juneteenth because this is the sesquicentennial
or the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the emancipation proclamation
It's also the 50th
[anniversary] of the
March on Washington, and then next Year will be the 50th anniversary of the civil [rights] act of
1964 So kind of [compare] to these
monumental
moments in history June teeth might seem
Like a little small moment in time, but it really is a very significant event and I hope to just to really share
What I've learned about Juneteenth, so that you could perhaps see it as I do is kind of the roots really of this long
freedom
Movement and
It surely would have gone unmarked had it not been for those
Former slaves who were under that balcony on June
[eighteen]
1865 and who kindled that flame and Kept it alive
And so now Juneteenth is one of those few celebrations
That is actually celebrated not just here in Texas, but around the country [and] even around the world um
So what are we going to talk about?
this evening in the next 30 minutes or so so first what I would really like [to] do is just
Clearly cut it explain the origins of Juneteenth, and I'm going to take a little time [to] dispel a few
misconceptions about that day on June 19 1865
[they] don't want to kind of describe Juneteenth through time looking at the celebration over
It's kind of its first hundred years from basically
1866 to the 1970s and
Finally then I want to talk about the legacies of Juneteenth talk about the difficulty in memorialized
Memorializing this period of history which is which reminds us of a dark?
Past a dark period In American history and but how it has really come to be a celebration
of freedom around the world on
Today and of course I welcome your questions
after the in the after the presentation in the Q&A session, so let us get [started] now before I talk about
that the or that moment in
1964 let me just give you a very brief background
about
emancipation Day
Celebrations so African Americans really began celebrating what they would call
emancipation Day
during the American revolution, so
They did this because they were commemorating the declaration [of] independence and also this promise of Liberty
for
enslaved African Americans in the new United States
But we know that the founding generation really struggled to try to reconcile this
rhetoric about freedom with the reality
of slavery
but we do know [that] there were many northern state most of the Northern States did abolish slavery and so that tens of
thousands of
African-Americans for generations
Celebrated emancipation day usually on the on the 1st of January
But they also sometimes combined them with celebrations on the 4Th of july, but Juneteenth is
something altogether
Different and very special and the fact that it still survives and that his is that it's grown from this Texas tradition
to being a celebration
Commemorated throughout the United States and throughout the world in places like Canada
Nigeria Japan
France South Korea um
Shows that there is something really unique and something really special about
Juneteenth it speaks to [us] about the past, but it also speaks to us about
where we are
today
So the title of this speech of this talk comes from this quote
When peace come they read the mansa patient law to the colored people they the freed slaves?
Spent that night singing and shouting. They wasn't slaves no more
That's former slave pearce harper talking in
1937 and in
Recalling what happened in 1865 when the slaves in Texas?
[learned] that they had been freed
emancipated two and a half years earlier
by Lincoln's emancipation
proclamation so certainly the singing and the shouting and the celebrating of those slaves
[happened] quite late, so in spite of Robert E. Lee's surrender in april of
1865 at the Appomattox Courthouse the end of the [Civil] [war] did not immediately come to Texas
I mean, it was June 2nd
1865
before the confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith finally
Surrendered to Union Forces in Galveston, so slaveholders in Texas really refused to acknowledge
That the war was over and they refused to give up their slaves
Now holding on to such a fantasy. I know you're probably thinking how
could they
continue to do this
But it really wasn't as hard as you as you would think that's because Texas was really kind of insulated during the Civil war
Because of the confederate blockade there weren't that many battles that happened in Texas
This is a picture of the battle of the port of Galveston Harbor that happened in 1862
So the Texas was really shielded from the brunt of the Civil war in fact
Slaveholders especially those in Mississippi and Louisiana
Would bring their slaves to Texas to hide them from the oncoming
Union Lines so at the end of the Civil war
there were untold you know thousands and maybe tens of
Thousands of slaves that were added to the hundred and eighty thousand slaves that were already living here in Texas
So union Brigadier general gordon Granger, and that's his picture there at that bottom
arrived with with about 1800 union Troops at
Galveston in mid-july don't really know the exact date, but on June 19th
Granger made news of freedom official he stepped onto the balcony of Ashton Villa which was the former headquarters?
of the
Army of the Confederate States of America
and he read general orders number three and this order informed the slaves that the war was over and
that they had been freed by Lincoln with the emancipation proclamation
Two and one-half years earlier now the reactions and of these
Newly emancipated slaves was mixed. I mean you had some people who stood in utter disbelief
[people] shouted prayers to God but most [sang] and danced right there in the streets
And I do hope [that] someone asks me a little bit more about the general orders in the question and answer
Section now right here. I'm going to do a little historical
Housekeeping so I want to take a moment really to correct
misconceptions about
emancipation
Now it is true that Texas slaveholders and confederates have suppressed news of the emancipation proclamation
[that] went into effect in 1863, but the truth is really that the [emancipation] proclamation
Really didn't free that many slaves
It didn't free the vast
Majority of slaves first of all it didn't even apply to the border states the slaves in the border states that stayed
Loyal to the Union and then of course the USa could no more dictate you know what the confederate states of America
Did with its citizens then Jefferson Davis could command Lincoln to leave the quote?
Peaceful and contented slaves alone, lest he incite them to [a] general
assassination of their masters in quote
But more important than all that the slaves did not wait around
For a proclamation or a piece of paper to say that they were free between half a million to
800,000 of the three and a half million slaves
They ran away during the civil war they freed themselves
[they] did not need a piece of paper or
someone coming to tell them
What they had come?
But many African Americans [had] come to know that this war was a war of freedom and emancipation that it was about slavery
Now these [runaways] they ran to the north but many of them ran to the union lines
Right there in the South's backyard and many of them set up camps and they started free communities
and this is a picture of
One of those what they call contraband or one of those communities and you cost notice the youth the black union soldiers there
and those who didn't run
We're already shifting you know the power dynamics on the plantations and farms
Throughout the [south] including, Texas so therefore Africans were already
forging these new visions freedom and citizenship long
Before general Gordon Stepped onto the Balcony of Ashton Villa now
I don't want to leave you with the impression that Juneteenth is not important it is
Because with that
announcement um
It was only then that
Texans were forced to finally acknowledge
That [African] [American] men women and children were now free and that they were no longer property and the word spread quickly
[some] people stayed put
Others left immediately they want to get away from their masters
Many wanted to find family members who had been sold away on some people went north some people even left the country
Some came back and score [some] never returned
so June 19th
became Afro Texans a new
Emancipation day or jubilee day as it was often called now the first jubilee day celebrations took place of course
right under that Ashton
villa Balcony the first official celebrations began in
1866 and from the very beginning
[the] Black church which was the most important independent
Institution in the African American Community was really central to those celebrations
The celebrations featured parties they had food there was sporting events
[they] would have horse races foot races. They played baseball games
people saying spirituals go down moses and many thousands gone was very popular and in the
1860s at Peyton Colony which was a freedom?
Colony in Blanco County the Baptist church, they are held a special
Juneteenth service and then the children
marched in a circle from the church to [the] school to the
cemetery and then back to [the] church and kind of a symbolic
reuniting of the free living with the deceased and unfree
Ancestors, so this was a walk. You know in freedom
They even had five works, so they created these by cutting holes in trees
and they filled [them] with gunpowder and set them on fire, so by
1870 in Texas
[there] were nearly 50 freedom colonies or these settlements of
Emancipated African Americans and there were there were hundreds of them
But 50 of them were located at near comanche crossing in Limestone
County and that top picture of course is a picture of a comanche crossing and the largest and most popular Juneteenth
celebrations occur occurred right there, so
African-Americans also celebrated in
communities in Texas city in Texas cities in Austin and Houston
especially were
Very popular they even [purchased] land [to] creating these emancipation parks to hold their jubilee day
Celebrations and here of course are some pictures of those early celebrations now
They're not a lot of scholarly sources on Juneteenth
But a few people who talk about it mention that you start they [start] using the term Juneteenth instead of Jubilee day
After 1900, but in my research I've actually found that it was in the early 1890s as early as 1891 that
African-Americans in their communities were calling jubilee day june 10th and Juneteenth of course it's obvious
It's just june and 19th where they cut out the nine, and he squeezed the June
And the teeth together, so by the early
1900s Juneteenth
celebrations had spread from Texas to Southeast, Oklahoma
To Southwest Arkansas and parts of Louisiana, and they rivaled
Independence day [celebrations] so now to people looking on the outside um
They probably saw these people celebrating and eating and playing games and they thought of them as these kind of just jubilant
Celebrations that took place on one day a year, but during these celebrations
Especially in the 1860s 1870s and 1880s blacks were talking about their political rights, they even had
politicians people running for the local governments and state governments come to the Juneteenth celebrations and picnics and
stomp to try to convince African
American American vote they encouraged the blacks [and] [attendants] to register to vote because freedom
included the right to vote and it was that right was slowly being taken away during the last decades of the
1800s and of course it was pretty much completely compromised
[by] the early [1900's]
Now Juneteenth can really teach us not just about the past, but it's also important in our more recent
history
Society and politics and culture
so if we just look [at] it inside American history instead of something that happens parallel to or
outside of us history
Then we get a deeper meaning out of what some would consider a hidden history for example in the late nineteen teens
to the
1930s those large-scale
Community-Wide, Juneteenth celebrations actually became less frequent
So people continued to celebrate you know in their homes and in their churches and in their communities, but those really big Countywide
celebrations like the ones that comanche crossing
really became
almost
Non-existence and so existent and so I had to ask myself well you know why is that?
So I thought you know about looking at the the period. What was going on in
America at the time so by World War one [the] late nineteen teens
segregation laws firmly in Place
[there] was this tide of nativism that was engulfing the country and so for anyone who doesn't quite remember?
what nativism means that means there was this rejection of outsiders this fear of foreigners and
So [I] think that you know the [combin] combining segregation racial
discrimination with this or with the xenophobia and nativism um
Led Many whites and even many blacks
African-Americans to see Juneteenth as unAmerican
Unamerican because it focused on this dark period In
American history
Precisely at the time that the united States was trying to show itself as this
Global power, you know on the world stage and so [um] ironically
therefore Juneteenth was considered unpatriotic
That's celebrating it show that she would disloyal to the united states and that time
not only did it commemorate this really dark period But those were also some dark days at that time because
This was during the red summer which was a wave of deadly lynchings and race riots that occurred
in the United States from 1919 to 1921
But you know Juneteenth is a spirit of freedom and it refuses to just die so there's this renaissance that comes
in Juneteenth that occurs shortly
Before the United States goes to world war [two] and the really important
catalyst for
This this this renaissance happens right up 75 in Dallas, Texas
So you have an tant Antonio Maceo Smith?
He's an educator and he he's head of the Dallas negro Chamber of Commerce
and he's trying to lead efforts to create this commemoration or an exhibit of
African-American life and culture for the test, Texas sesquicentennial in
1936 well the [State] [Fair] [organisers] refused and so smith does not give up so he goes over their heads
to the federal government, and he actually secures a
$100,000 grant and he uses that money to build the hall of negro life on the state fairgrounds
Now local white leaders protested the construction of the hall, but there was nothing that they [could] do it was completed
And it was dedicated on
Juneteenth
19:36 and so over
46,000
African-Americans streamed into the [state] [fair]
[grounds] for the largest Juneteenth celebration ever held up to that time now the hall
Unfortunately was demolished soon after the fair closed, but that spirit
There rekindled spirit of they could not destroy that and so then it was after
1936 that the Juneteenth celebration
Was revived in these more public?
Commemorations, that's because african-Americans now were emboldened
Because of their success during the centennial and also this was worth in the 40s. You have world war two and
African Americans were fighting for what they called a double victory, so there was a victory over
Fascism Abroad and a victory over
racism at home and so these Juneteenth celebrations in the 40s and the 50s
Really?
highlighted this idea the rekindled this idea of equal rights, and they would also honor former slaves and
African American veterans now during the civil rights movement that really started to kick off in the in the mid
1950s through the 1960s many blacks really were more conscious you know about drawing the
connections between their [present-day]
movement and their ancestors historical Struggles for freedom and for equal rights
So in Debate and reactions surrounding the Civil Rights act
Many made the explicit connection between that act and fulfilling the freedoms that were first
guaranteed in the
Emancipation proclamation and that the Juneteenth you know general orders show this deferred
freedom so president John f Kennedy mentioned the emancipation proclamation
in a speech calling for
Federal Civil rights legislation and after his assist
Assassination LBJ pushed through the bill and one of his aides told him quote it's equivalent to signing emancipation
Proclaimation end quote so the deferred freedom that was celebrated during Juneteenth
speaks to this struggle for equality in rights that continued through the passage of the civil rights act of 1964
[and] the activists in nineteen in the 1960s also made those connections [work] like I said clearly made those connections to Juneteenth
organizers of the
1968 poor People's March held a solidarity day, Rally, and they held it on June 10th
1968 and African Americans attended from all over the country and so after they returned home
They either revived or they initiated Juneteenth celebrations in their [hometowns] around the United States
[now] as a civil rights movement gave way to black power
celebrations in the
1970s focused more and more on black on Black pride and African and cultural heritage
So Huston was among the first of Texas cities to rekindle
more these [large-scale] [some]
celebrations with an annual blues festival that they hailed in Hermann park starting in 1973
I don't know if [anyone's] ever gone to one of those and of course by the
1980s states throughout the Country held these major Juneteenth celebrations
They included music art and expressions of African American heritage, and I had to really put this picture
Which is a more modern picture of the Gullah geechee [of] low country of celebrations because I spent a week?
last summer in
in Savannah and
actually on some of the islands
The geek the Gullah Islands and they have just such a unique way of celebrating that after at Gullah
African-American heritage and combining it with Juneteenth even in
Georgia
So I just wanted to to mention that special
so in so now we're going to just kind of close up as we talked about a
memorializing Jew teen
How is it that we remember or give honor to what we don't feel comfortable?
Remembering sometimes so what happens is in 1979 representative Al edwards. He's a democrat
He lives in Houston, and he introduces house bill 1016
And this bill is an effort to make
Juneteenth [a] state holiday, and so there's a coalition of
African American Latino and Anglo legislators who work together to support the bill and to
Make Juneteenth, and it succeeds, and it becomes the first
Official state emancipation holiday the legislature signed the Bill into law on June 7th
1979
right a week before
Juneteenth so edwards then pushes for a Juneteenth memorial
And there was a five statue memorial that was completed in 1999
However due to some you know political wrangling
There were some fundraising difficulties there was some controversies
about the historical accuracy of the
monument and the fact that
one of the statues bore a striking resemblance to representative edwards [it] was not until
2005 that that one part one statue of the memorial was installed near Ashton Villa in Galveston
[Texas] and that is the statue in the middle, and that's the preacher
and that's the one that looks like just like a
representative Edwards and
unfortunately in
2011 the Texas Legislature voted to end
any appropriations or consideration of the Juneteenth memorial project and
Decided [to] instead to install a kind of a new monument in afro, Texas monument in Austin that [would] be similar to
the proposed tejano monument
So today people of all races and ethnicities and nationalities
In the United States and the Caribbean in Europe and for cutting all over the world celebrate
Juneteenth and the fact that juneteenth has really endured as a national and an international celebration for nearly 100
150 years you know shows that it is one of those small
you know historical moments, but it's really a
significant
time in us history
[so] we should not see Juneteenth as the commemoration of this old
day in the past when the African immensly is Gathered in Galveston in
1865 you know because it has really come to mean different things to different generations
So Juneteenth tells many different refrains of the struggle for freedom
that the struggle for
African-Americans to immigrants to activists even
Today who are strong fighting for social change?
So those celebrations [that] [have] taken place, especially since the 1930s and rekindled and changed
in the 1970s um
Yes, they forced Americans to really deal [with] this gap between the promises of freedom and democracy and the realities of racism
and discrimination
But it is also
I think shown and Borne out the fact that America in the United States is really
The Beacon of [freedom] and democracy and I would think that those ancestors who kept that flame alive
through all these years
would be very proud
To know that the freedom that was deferred to them today that we of course can enjoy it today
So I really thank you and appreciate
Your listening. Thank you very much
Okay, you like for us to ask you a little bit more about the [general] [orders] so you can expound upon that please yes
Yes, the general orders. I mean, I won't know if I can go back the general orders um are
it was really seen as really unimportant in Texas and actually there's like only like three surviving copies and
The Dallas historical Society has a copy on display
at the [halt] estate in Dallas
but if you were to actually read the general orders
And I can imagine that the [african-Americans] who were sitting. I was standing up under that
That balcony those that were looking in disbelief
[they] probably were really listening to what the orders say and actually the orders um
kind of show the difficulties of dealing with
emancipation after the Civil war they don't really promise the
Former slaves very much of anything other than freedom in fact it encourages them
Basically to kind of fend for themselves. Maybe go on back to the plantation and strike up a deal with their former masters
because um the the
federal government really wasn't prepared or
desirous of doing very much for them so uh
That's why it's always really kind of important to look at these primary sources even reading the emancipation proclamation
Yourself and just kind of thinking about what people at the time
Would have felt and thought when they heard and saw those things yes, sir
So that issue raises the question of what was you know what were the actual economic?
Impact of this transition. I mean that's what that goes to is. Is that you would have immediate
Unemployment all over the place and and the industries would fall apart so what what actually happened and how much?
actual economic disruption occurred oh
The Civil War was the ultimate economic disruption. So it wasn't just that the agricultural industry
was disruptive or really the
Cotton for example was the number-one export in the United states and then behind that were these [slave] produced
foodstuffs, so it was in the interest of not just the the southerners, but even of the federal government to get
African-Americans
get-get Southern
Southerners back to growing the crops that they needed to rebuild the United States after the war
And that's also why that period of reconstruction?
[what] sad this promise of freedom?
but the reality is that
It ended up kind of returning blacks to a state of quasi slavery so that so the impact was devastating
For African Americans, especially those who kind of believed that this was freedom come you know peace when peace come um
but it also um
Has [me], but it's not something
I don't think that we should we should turn away from because it is here this long struggle for freedom
Where we get not just African Americans
Trying to cash trying to activate the promises of freedom
but also the United States growing into the role of
Freedom and Democracy that it promised it has been promising its citizens to become that beacon to become the place
That African Americans [me] know basically [hoped] that it would be at the end of the Civil war
So that's why I don't think [that] we should
Shy away from talking about slavery or the Civil war that we actually should embrace it. You know
I love the food in the [south] and all the things of the south
But was there anything really characteristically different about how they celebrated in the north [in] the south
we know the food in the North wasn't as good but
Um are you talking about with emancipation day celebrations are just as as as it's praying
What the emancipation day celebrations as I as I looked at them and read them um
They were they were they were kind of traditional fare because it was cold in January. They reminded me a lot of thanksgiving
you know that people will kind of sit [around] the table kind of dressed up and
And and and enjoy you know the holiday and commemorate emancipation day, but I think of but what's wonderful about
Southern [Flu] ways in Food Waste in
African-American you know food ways in general is [that] um you know they just have filtered through the entire country and so today I
Mean you have just this wonderful
celebration of kind of traditional
Southern food, but then especially I mean especially if you go to like the low country you also have
The Gullah Foods which tend to be
You know seafood and it's very different. You know how they celebrate and commemorate the
Around the country but barbecue and watermelon and red soda and water
It's kind of Standard [I]
Thank you so much for your interesting presentation um
Can you tell us more about?
comanche crossing
Where is it and why was it a popular place for?
Juneteenth early celebrations now regarding why on comanche
Crossing is so important if I think that it was really important because it was in rural. It's in Blanco County
I'm
Horrible with directions, so I couldn't tell you exactly where [that] I don't know if it's central, Texas or East, Texas
But it's Blanco County [b]. [La] and Co and
Rural Texans Rural Afro Texans had a lot more freedom to
Buy land and create those rural
communities those freedom colonies and in fact as I was [doing] my research
I was trying to find out what was going on here in Collin County and I found out for example in
1870 that Collin County residents burned down the African American school
But there was an uh there was an african-American community in Douglas street, which is near plano
Which is in Plano, I think four miles or so. I don't remember east or west from
downtown Plano was one African-American Community but in Collin County
As it within Grimes County was another County?
Many of the whites banded together to try to Prohibit
African-Americans from buying land because they wanted to basically chase [african-Americans] out of the county so what in rural areas like?
Blanco County and that comanche crossing that african-Americans had a lot more freedom and
opportunity to create Their own
Independent communities where they could celebrate things like Juneteenth and those things that were important to them and build those
institutions like schools and churches
Just to speak to the gentleman who asked about the food in the north
[I] am from the north and we celebrated emancipation day
But we celebrated on august the 1st. Everybody was going down to the river with the churches and
Civic organizations
Because Newport Rhode Island was as you know a slave trading place
And so there were many many slaves in that area
Yeah
And actually the emancipation day was celebrated on different days because different states in the north emancipated their days their slaves
Slaves at different times and it was gradual emancipation
I don't want anybody to imagine that they just let the African Americans freed them
But Rhode Island is [also] really important in my own study because that's kind of one of the earliest
African mutual aid Societies was founded in Rhode Island would you say immediately after?
Order 3 was read and even the emancipation proclamation was the sharecropping system
Like immediately enacted or did it take time for them to really get into it because you did say
That the former slaves were able to make more demands but from what I've learned
From getting my degree in history and then in my history classes that sharecropping in
Theory, they were able to get more you know ask for more things, but in reality [basically] it basically was [like] you said
Another form of slavery so I just wanted a little bit more well. I'm looking at sharecropping
isn't sharecropping actually that you really get [that] sense of that door closing because
African-Americans were able to sharecropping was this kind of compromise and
Trying to deal with the fact that now you're dealing with free labor these
African-Americans in the south is cash poor and so there was this idea that you would share
the proceeds of the [clop] so in exchange for the the own planter
Providing the land and making some of the materials to seeds ETC then
African-Americans and poor whites too would work the land and then at the end share
Part of the crops part would go to the planter land holder part would go to the sharecropper
And in those contracts many African Americans were able to make to put some of those demands on paper
In fact there are some wonderful essays about
Masters being upset that the wives aren't out working alongside
their husbands and these are these these this wanting to live farther away and have independent homesteads and an
Opportunity to educate their children, but it was the freedmen's Bureau that really helped to
Enforce some of the
Provisions in those contracts and so once reconstruction was over and the federal government left and so then the freedmen's Bureau left
[African] [Americans] lost that leverage that they had had and so it they were then
the share that the planter
then was able [to] more fully exploit them, and that's also when you have the passage of you know vagrancy laws, and there's the
the convict lease system
ETC. There's this new book out. That's the new Jim crow
talking about the kind of A
Convict lease system that emerged out of the sharecropping and even today when they're talking about the prison industrial complex as a kind of new
Sharecropping arrangement what [african-Americans] and people of color not just having Americans
Um you were talking about when there was a halt African American history that was built in the Texas state fair
It's the holiday life. Yes
Um I was under the impression that in the 1970s
I believe it was the 70s. There was a protest so that African American could actually attend
other than one day every year
attend the state fair
[so] when were
African-Americans
Allowed to go to Texas state [fair], and when there were they excluded to where it was only one day
They always had a color day at the at the state fair sometimes it was
Well, but but at first it was called color day
Because booker t. Washington spoke that cone color day in 1900
and so African Americans always attended the state fair on a segregated day and
They always struggled you know to to
Kind of open up
the fair and actually when people talk about
So the holiday girl life was a beautiful hall
I mean it had these murals that depicted African American life from Slavery
Up to the to the 1930s and especially in Texas
created by Harlem renaissance
You know painters and sculptures and it was a beautiful hall
It's just so unfortunate that it was destroyed especially when I see how beautiful the hall of state is so
It was so many people actually I am I have so many different projects
But I am working on this project on the dallas negro housewives league and the invisible
Civil Rights movement in Dallas because a lot of people don't think there was really a civil rights movement [in] Dallas because we didn't have
any major
Marches like in Selma no akin to Selma but there was a really
Vibrant
Movement in
Dallas especially in Fort worth [too]
[and] in the [state] fair desegregated the state fair was one of the kind of the really important
arenas [that] African Americans one of the one of the signs of segregation that they wanted to tear down
So that was a really important part of the civil Rights movement in Dallas
