Juneteenth is a combination of the words ‘June’ and ‘nineteenth’, which represent June 19, 1865, the day that Union troops reached Galveston, Texas, announcing the end of slavery based on President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.
On this day—over two years after the proclamation was declared—Union General Gordon Granger and his Union troops arrived in Galveston. General Granger read General Order No. 3, which states, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”
The history of Black slaves in Texas is directly connected to Mexico abolishing slavery and American slave settlers such as Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett and Sam Houston violating Mexican law and bringing their slaves into Mexico at the Alamo for their last stand on March 6, 1836.
Prior to that event, runaway slaves from Galveston Island became an unwanted nuisance for their slave owners. John Quincy Adams (6th president of the U.S.) characterized the subsequent war between the slave settlers and the Mexican government as “a war between slavery and emancipation.”
This was the historical context of Jubilee or Juneteenth and the celebration of Jubilee or freedom is the largest African American celebration from Fresno, California; to Seattle, Washington; to Billings, Montana; to Charlotte, North Carolina; to Sacramento, California; to Oakland and San Francisco, California; to Milwaukee, Wisconsin; to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; to Houston, Texas; to Denver, Colorado; to Memphis, Tennessee; to Chicago, Illinois; to New York City; to Atlanta, Georgia; and all stops in between.
This celebration of Black freedom captured the imagination of Hollywood when it produced the 2020 film Miss Juneteenth, written and directed by Channing Godfrey Peoples. The film stars Nicole Beharie, Kendrick Sampson and Alexis Chikaeze and is set and filmed in Fort Worth, Texas.
Miss Juneteenth’s plot involves a single mom, Turquoise Jones, who was crowned Miss Juneteenth as a teenager and some years later wants her teenage daughter, Kai, to follow in her footsteps.
For the performance competition, Kai recites Maya Angelou’s poem “Phenomenal Woman.” The film is a coming-of-age story for both Turquoise and Kai.
So as all the various multicultural communities in Fresno celebrate Juneteenth, everyone should pause and reflect upon the nation’s history which, prior to the cataclysmic Civil War, was characterized as a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.
It took 700,000 Americans to die on the battlefields from Bull Run to Appomattox Court House when Southern Confederate commander Robert E. Lee surrendered to northern Union commander Ulysses Grant to give this nation a new path to attempt to forge a more perfect union. For Black folk who were slaves in Texas, freedom came almost three years later than for most.
