A HOLIDAY WALK
To commemorate Juneteenth this year, residents have planned banquets, lectures, concerts, and other activities over two to three weeks, as they do every year. However, you don’t have to visit in June to appreciate the holiday and to learn what happened here.
“I tell people you can read about swimming and watch a documentary on swimming, but at some point you have to get in the water. It’s the same with Juneteenth,” says Collins. “By coming to Galveston, you get to be immersed in the experience, to retrace the steps where the soldiers came, got off the ship, delivered the message of freedom and then moved throughout the State of Texas.”
To do this, the self-guided Juneteenth Freedom Walk map and video presentation can be accessed on mobile devices through VisitGalveston.com. It highlights five key locations beginning at Pier 21. (From here, I could see Galveston’s newest homeported cruise ship, Carnival Cruise Line’s Excelclass Carnival Jubilee, docked within sight during my visit.) The pier is where a historic marker details the so-called Middle Passage trans-Atlantic slave trade route that reached Galveston’s port.
The second stop on the tour is the Absolute Equality Mural on the outside walls of the Nia Cultural Center which, inside, showcases the works of local artists. The mural overlooks the city’s Juneteenth Marker and the adjacent parking lot — the former location of the Osterman Building, which served as Granger’s Galveston headquarters. A short walk leads to the tour’s third stop, the columned 1861 U.S. Customs House, occupied by Union troops after Granger’s arrival and where General Order No. 3 was also posted.
“This building, because it had been a Confederate office building, still had a functioning printing press,” explains historian Edward Cotham, author of the book Juneteenth: The Story Behind the Celebration. “They were used to print multiple copies of the Juneteenth order, probably thousands of them. They were the freedom papers that many of these enslaved people always remembered as being part of the source of their emancipation.”