It’s been over 150 years since Texas slaves were informed of their freedom on this day known commonly as Juneteenth. This particular year, amid local and national conversations about racism, celebrating emancipation is especially important to local artist Danielle East, who is helping to plan Lubbock’s Juneteenth celebration this year.
“I feel like it’s significant every year,” she says. “And with COVID-19, with everything being cancelled, I felt like it shouldn’t be. This would be the first year since 1865 that people wouldn’t be celebrating it.”
What came after the announcement of emancipation for Texas slaves, wasn’t exactly a celebration according to assistant professor of African American history, Dale Kretz. Let’s take a moment to recognize that this was two years after President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. A quarter of a million enslaved men, women and children in Texas had no idea they were free.
Kretz explains that proclamations of freedom from distant figures in Washington at that time didn’t matter as much as the enforceability of freedom on the ground. In response to Texas slave-owners refusing to inform their slaves of emancipation, they sent Union general Gordon Granger along with 1800 union soldiers to Galveston, Texas to deliver the news on June 19, 1865.
Here is the order he gave in its entirety:
“People of Texas are informed that in accordance with the proclamation from the executive of the united states, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that of an employer and hired labor. The freed men are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect or gather at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."
“So it starts off rather good right,” Kretz says. “All slaves are free, he uses language of absolute equality, of personal rights and property rights.” But then, the ordinance slips into a more ominous one, revealing the true intentions behind it. “Which is that of forcing newly freed men and women and children into contracts with employers, who were more often than not their former enslavers,” the professor says.
The order not only pushed former slaves back onto the plantations, it also attempted to curb black mobility and protest. According to records, many freed slaves fled to the north or to neighboring states to find lost relatives and for a better life. Few remained as employees of their former masters, a testament to the treatment they endured for a lifetime.
Texans did not immediately fold to federal orders. Immediately following General Granger’s announcement, Kretz says that the Galveston mayor began returning slaves to their former owners, refusing to accept the ordinance. And as rebel soldiers returned to their homes in Texas, they unleashed terror on freed slaves.
“Texas was a real beacon for runaway masters during the Civil War,” Kretz says. “They wanted to hold onto their enslaved laborers and so they flooded Texas during the Civil War—fleeing the union army, fleeing eventual emancipation.”
During the reign of terror, as Kretz describes it, Texas saw more bloodshed then it had during the entire Civil War.
While emancipation didn’t provide complete freedom for the former slaves, it paved the way for the future.
“The actual full text of the order itself is really prophetic in this regard,” Kretz says. “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly in their homes—It’s basically talking about quarantine.” He believes that with the combined events of COVID-19 and racial protests, this year, more than any other year, Juneteenth should be celebrated to its fullest.
That’s exactly what East and her friends intend to do for the city of Lubbock. “I know freedom isn’t based on what one person says,” she says. “You always have your freedom, but it’s just good to celebrate what we’ve been through and our resilience.”
Lubbock’s Juneteenth celebration will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, June 19 at the Charles Adams Studio Project. The event planners have implemented various protocols to ensure the safety of attendees to help avoid the spread of the coronavirus.