Juneteenth 2020 moves online, but the spirit of celebration is more present than ever
Coronavirus has forced the cancellation of most in-person Juneteenth events this year, but the spirit of the celebration of Blacks’ freedom from slavery will continue online — and in the protests that for weeks have pushed for racial equality and justice.
“This is a collective moment to kind of gather at the table of memory, to reflect upon both the pain and the anger that we might feel when we think about enslavement of other human beings, but also the joy and inspiration that we can feel when we think about someone living a life in a fully human way,” said Michelle Lanier, director of the N.C. Division of State Historic Sites. “That reaching for full freedom is a continuous journey.”
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. It originated in Texas, where on June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived with his soldiers in Galveston with the news that the war had ended and slaves were free.
The pronouncement came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, but the president’s edict had little effect in Texas without Union soldiers there to enforce it.
Most states, including North Carolina, recognize Juneteenth on June 19. Several events traditionally are held to honor the day, including a daylong festival of music, arts, crafts and food in Winston-Salem, and Juneteenth at Stagville, when the state historic site in Durham uses storytelling and living history demonstrations to explore the struggles of the nearly 1,000 people who were freed from the plantation at the end of the Civil War.
Many people may never have heard of Juneteenth until it recently began appearing on smartphones and Google calendars, or when black community and political leaders complained that President Donald Trump had planned a rally in Tulsa, Okla., on the date. In 1921, Tulsa was the scene of a mob attack by armed whites on an affluent Black business and residential district. As many as 300 people may have been killed, and many businesses were burned to the ground.
Trump said he had never heard of Juneteenth and rescheduled the event for Saturday, June 20. On Thursday, he said his scheduling — and rescheduling — of the rally had brought attention to the date.
“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview Wednesday.
A range of reactions
While Historic Stagville in Durham is not hosting its annual Juneteenth celebration this year, the site is open Tuesday through Saturday for guided and self-guided tours.
It may still be hard for Americans to learn and talk about slavery. Attending Juneteenth celebrations or visiting historic sites in the state where it’s possible to imagine people surviving in slavery, escaping from it or rebuilding after it can produce a range of reactions.
“There really is not a part of our state that was not touched by slavery,” Lanier said, and that history is incorporated at sites from Somerset Plantation, near the coast, to the Vance Birthplace, near Asheville in the mountains.
“There are young people who absolutely see places like Stagville [and other historic sites] as places of inspiration, and others who feel a sense of anger and rage, and they are all welcome to come to our sites and to connect with us and debate,” Lanier said. “And I have met elders who absolutely have a hard time thinking about going to an antebellum space and I have met youth who have felt empowered to go to antebellum space.
“There is not a formula for when a person says, I would like to be curious about this place and I would like to see if there is something in the story of this place that can contribute to me and my life. When that happens is very personal, but we welcome people at any stage,” Lanier said.
Emanuel “Poobie” Chapman is ready to help people who may want to start with something as universal as a taste for good food.
Chapman is the all-time assists leader at N.C. Central University where, as a point guard, it was his job to put people in positions to succeed.
‘Celebrate our culture’
Chapman, now the men’s basketball coach at Raleigh’s Enloe High School, continues to put people in positions to succeed. With Juneteenth approaching, Chapman realized many of his players weren’t familiar with the holiday. So he wanted to come up with a way to educate his players and bring the community together to celebrate.
Chapman decided to host “Soul Food II” on Friday at Roberts Park in Southeast Raleigh. A flier boasts the event as a “celebration of us as people. To celebrate our culture! Nobody else is going to do it.”
Chapman came up with the name, Soul Food, because the term came from food, more like scraps, given to slaves on plantations.
“That’s pretty much what soul food is, something that we were given and we made the best of,” Chapman told the N&O. “I think that was the perfect name for me; this is the situation we are in but we are making the best of it. It’s a chance to celebrate our culture.”
The event will feature food trucks, a bounce house for kids, basketball games, a DJ and a scavenger hunt. There will also be kickball and giveaways.
Protests and celebration
Since the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minnesota police, and after other police-related deaths and racial injustices, protests and rallies have been popping up across the nation. Chapman has been on the streets in Raleigh himself, marching and protesting. He doesn’t want Friday’s event to detract from what protesters have been doing, but he believes the two can go hand in hand.
Protests are needed, he said, “but I also think we should take time to celebrate what we have as well,” Chapman said. “It’s another thing as far as liberation. Like, we’ve made it this far regardless of everything that’s been going on. I think we should celebrate ourselves as well. Alongside protest and saying we need this, we demand this, we deserve this, we should also celebrate what we do have.”
The event is open to the public, rain or shine, and Chapman encourages everyone who attends to wear a mask. The event also will be open to vendors, mostly small businesses.
“It’s pretty much a celebration of us,” Chapman said. “I wanted to put together a block party because a lot of people who have power, who have pull and influence haven’t been doing enough. I’m just trying to do my part and carry my weight because I have a little bit of influence around here, just enough to get everyone together to celebrate.”
In North Carolina, where about a third of the population was in bondage when the Civil War began, Blacks were more likely to celebrate Emancipation Day, on Jan. 1, than Juneteenth in the decades after the war. Historians say celebrations of Emancipation Day, as well as of Jonkonnu, which was brought to North Carolina from West Africa, gradually disappeared with the adoption of Jim Crow laws in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Interest in Juneteenth and in the history of Black people in North Carolina in general may be enhanced by recent events.
Ernest Dollar, executive director of the City of Raleigh Museum and the Pope House Museum, said he was looking forward this year to a Juneteenth celebration at Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh. The event was canceled because of COVID-19, but he expects it to go on in 2021 at the park, which was a plantation before it became the site of a mental hospital.
Dollar tracked down descendants of a man believed to have been enslaved on the plantation, and brought them down from New York for a tour of the property.
‘This is the product of history’
In this moment of protests against police brutality and inequality in the justice system, “It’s easy to say, ‘Yes, we’re going to look at Black history, come to grips with the dimensions of its legacy, both bad and good, and weave this into the historic narratives we tell ourselves,’” Dollar said. “But will it be the same next year, next month?
“Folks I have talked to have really looked at the issues floating around the United States today and said, ‘Where did this come from? What does this mean? Why are folks protesting so passionately?’
“It’s our job,” he said, “to say, ‘This is the product of history. You can trace it back to the slave patrols of the antebellum if you want to.’”
Angela Thorpe, director of the N.C. African American Heritage Commission at the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, said it’s important for people to keep Black people at the center of the Juneteenth story. Don’t focus on the arrival of the Union forces at Galveston, she said, who though they brought the news of emancipation did not always make sure formerly enslaved people were able to claim it.
In Texas and in other places, former slaves were killed or beaten for trying to leave the plantations where they had been held.
“That’s part of what’s missed sometimes in the Juneteenth narrative,” Thorpe said. The order delivered by the troops was that enslaved people were free, but they were instructed to stay and continue working for pay.
Former slaves didn’t trust the assurance that they would now be paid for their labors, Thorpe said.
“So they choose to leave the places where they were formerly held in bondage, sometimes at the expense of their own lives. This centers their decision-making and their understanding of freedom and citizenship in their own lives.”
In North Carolina, Thorpe said, formerly enslaved people built new lives after emancipation. They regathered their families as they were able, established churches and built businesses and other institutions.
Juneteenth is a reminder, Thorpe said, that “Black history is American history. American history is complex. It’s important to understand all of those complexities to have a clear sense of why we are where we are now.”
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 5:02 PM.
