Texas People, Texas Places: More Musings of the Rambling Boy

37. Juneteenth Belongs to Texas

✥ 37 ✥ Juneteenth Belongs to Texas Last m o n t h I was rambling around the Hill Country, working on a research project that has occupied most of my spring and summer, and stopped for breakfast at the Bowling Alley Café on the square in Blanco, a small town on US 281 between Johnson City and San Antonio. Taped to the door of the café was a handbill advertising the annual Juneteenth celebration at Peyton Colony, an African American community about five miles east of Blanco. I have lived in Far West Texas for so long that I had almost forgotten about Juneteenth, but in the parts of our state that have large African American populations it is a red-letter day, a uniquely Texan holiday. Juneteenth, or, as it is sometimes more formally designated, June the Nineteenth, commemorates the day in June 1865 when the Federal General Gordon Granger issued a proclamation at his headquarters in Galveston that succinctly stated, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” The descendants of those slaves still celebrate that day with fervor. The “proclamation from the Executive” that General Granger was referring to was, of course, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863. Since that proclamation only applied to slaves held in the states that were in rebellion against the Union, it was not effective until those states were occupied by Federal troops. In Texas that did not occur until after the end of the war. Various folk tales have arisen to explain the delay. ✥ 145 I have heard it said that although the white planters of Texas knew about Lincoln’s proclamation as soon as it was issued, they held the news back from their slaves for two and a half years so that they could get three more cotton crops in. Another story is that Lincoln gave a black Union soldier a mule and started him off through the South to bring the slaves news of their freedom, and his mule was so slow that he did not reach Texas until June 19, 1865. In fact, issuing the proclamation was Granger’s first order of business after Galveston was occupied, and the spontaneous celebrations started as the news spread from one plantation to the next. By the late 1860s, the holiday had been institutionalized by the Freedman’s Bureau, whose agents used it to teach the assembled crowds about their new voting rights. After the Bureau’s demise in 1870, Juneteenth took on a life of its own. The celebrations frequently took place on grounds that had been purchased by African American associations for that purpose, such as Austin’s Emancipation Park and Mexia’s thirty-acre Comanche Crossing, purchased by the Mexia Nineteenth of June Association. The earliest celebrations always included a church service, held outdoors or in a tabernacle, and that has remained an important part of Juneteenth in most places. Another fixed element is a barbecue lunch with all the trimmings, including potato salad, beans, and mustard and collard greens. The food is always abundant , in contrast to the short rations endured by the participants’ enslaved ancestors, and is usually free. In 1918 the Austin paper reported that “beer, a hog, and two muttons” had been purchased with donations for the Juneteenth celebration; today the fare is more likely to be iced tea and chicken, sausage, and ribs. In 1933 a participant described a recent Juneteenth meal to folklorist William Wiggins: “The dinner was free. And you got all you wanted to eat. They had rows and rows of long, long tables. The young men usually served as waiters, and the young ladies served as waitresses . No part of the dinner was sold, but they did buy the cold 146 ✥ drinks and ice cream.” These days the meal is usually followed by a baseball game, a concert, or an evening dance. Sometimes a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation or of General Granger’s proclamation is part of the program. It has always been a tradition to dress up for Juneteenth. In the 1920s and ’30s Houston department stores ran ads in the local African American newspaper, the Informer, urging readers to buy new clothes at low prices. “DRESS UP AS YOU SHOULD BE FOR JUNETEENTH,” was the headline on an ad from Landers, which offered men’s...