Answers to Go with Susan Smith
Q. I know Juneteenth started in Texas. Is it celebrated in other states?
A. Let’s start by turning to a 1989 publication, “Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.” Here’s a passage from that source: “The celebration of June 19 as emancipation day spread to the neighboring states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, and later to California as black Texans migrated west. It has appeared occasionally in Alabama and Florida, also as a result of migration.
“Large celebrations began in 1866 and continued to be held regularly into the early 20th century. Observations of Juneteenth declined in the 1940s during World War II but revived with 70,000 black people on the Texas State Fair grounds at Dallas in 1950.
“As school desegregation and the civil rights movement focused attention on the expansion of freedom in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Juneteenth celebrations declined again, although small towns still observed Texas's emancipation day.
“In the 1970s, Juneteenth was revived in some communities, especially after two black members convinced the Texas Legislature to declare Juneteenth an unofficial ‘holiday of significance.’”
I know we’ve had local Juneteenth celebration for many years. I turned to our digital files and found articles about Juneteenth in the late 1970s. A June 21, 1973 Juneteenth article from the Hays County Citizen was subtitled “An Old Tradition is Revived.”
The title of a 1978 Juneteenth article announced that Adrianne Armstead was that year’s Juneteenth queen.
For older information, I checked our local history clipping files. In 1998, the Juneteenth committee produced a booklet which included the 1978 photograph of Ms. Armstead and fellow finalists Lula Burleson, Debra Wright and Cynthia Williams.
A much older flyer announced the June 19-21, 1926 celebration at the Hays County Fair Grounds. It featured free barbecue as well as baseball, foot races, high jumping, croquet, horse races, steer roping, a parade, a brass band and a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Let’s return to the original question about celebrations in other states. The annual publication “Chase’s Calendar of Events” concludes with current national information: “Slaves in Texas Emancipated (Juneteenth) June 19, 1865 — on this date at Galveston, Union general and commander of the Department of Texas Gordon Granger issued General order Number 3, which informed 250,000 slaves in the state of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 that freed them.
“Although it took months for all Texas slaves to hear the news, the June 19 date of Granger’s alert became a statewide date of celebration that continues nationwide today.”
