About 50 people attended a celebration of Juneteenth in Eutaw. There also was a walk and program in the Tishabee Community earlier in the day. On Saturday, the Gainesville Health and Wellness Center held a walk and day of activities in honor of Juneteenth.
Juneteenth, which is now a Federal holiday, commemorates the day – June 19, 1865- when Union Major Gordon Granger reached Galveston, Texas with the news that the Civil War was over and that slavery was ended. This was several years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in Confederate states and more than two months after Lee’s surrender for the South at Appomattox, ending the Civil War.
People in Texas and some other states continued to celebrate June 19, Juneteenth, after 1865, as a day of freedom and ending slavery in our nation. Two years ago, Congress and President Biden signed to make the day an official Federal holiday, which means the post office, banks and schools are closed.
In Eutaw the celebration began at Noon with a motorcade of twenty vehicles, many with signs, driving around the city, sounding their horns.
A meeting was held at Sandra Walker’s building on Tuscaloosa Street to discuss the history and significance of Juneteenth.
Spiver W. Gordon, presided over the meeting. James Otieno, Greene County resident and immigrant from Kenya, spoke about the history and importance of Africa to the discussion of the origins of slavery and the size, importance and influence of the 54 countries on the African continent.
Dr. Carol P. Zippert spoke about the history of Juneteenth, as the day the message that the Civil War had ended and slavery was abolished reached Texas in 1865.
Gordon asked the children in the audience if they knew what an ‘outhouse’ and a ‘slop-jar’ was? He raised these questions to speak to the past history of Black people in Alabama, many of whom did not have running water and indoor bathrooms for more than a hundred years after ‘freedom’ in 1865.
Ms. Martha James commented that children today, “Do not know what a garden hoe is and how to use it. We need to teach them, like my parents taught me, so they will always be able to raise a garden and eat vegetables that they can grow.”
Dr. Monty Thornburg, who is assisting Gordon with the Alabama Civil Rights Movement Museum project said that “There is a crisis in American education today, where our schools can take a holiday for Juneteenth but cannot teach honestly about slavery and its continuing impact on Black people, for fear of offending some students and their parents.” He was referring to laws passed in Alabama, Florida and Texas that do not allow teaching of history, which will dis-comfort some of the white students.
Gordan announced that there will be a mass meeting in Tishabee on Saturday, July 29, 2023, to commemorate the 1969 Special Election in Greene County that allowed Back people to take control of the County Commission and School Board in Greene County – our Freedom Day!