S.C. shooting casts shadow on Juneteenth
Holiday marking freedom prompts local responses to racial killings
Dozens gathered, as they do every year, in the Third Ward on Saturday to celebrate Juneteenth.
They sat along Holman Street, just blocks from Emancipation Park in the sticky heat, to listen to the drums bang and cymbals clash.
This year’s parade and festival took on extra importance given the horrific events earlier in the week, when a white gunman walked into a historic African-American church in South Carolina and shot nine worshipers to death as they were participating in a Bible study.
“When something like this affects the country, we all pull together and deal with it,” said Herbert Miller, 58, who sat along the parade route with his 15-year-old daughter, Tayelor. Miller and his family had recently moved to Katy from Dallas, he said.
Despite the shootings, he said it had shown one positive: communities across the country reacting in unison and support for the victims.
“When something like this affects the country, we all pull together and deal with it,” he said.
But his daughter said Dylann Roof, the 21-yearold white man charged in the slayings, was being treated differently by the media.
“If a black guy did that, he’d be a thug,” she said. “If a white guy does that, he’s mentally ill. A Muslim? He’s a terrorist. That bothers me.” 1865 declaration
This was the first year for the Millers to celebrate Juneteenth in Houston.
Union General Gordon Granger moored in Galveston and walked out onto the balcony of the Ashton Villa on June 19, 1865. Granger declared that Texas’ 250,000 slaves were free, bringing the news of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation that had taken place more than two years previously.
“It’s an important date,” said Barbara Johnson, a 63-year-old former resident of the Third Ward who celebrates Juneteenth every year. “Our children need to have a sense of history and it brings the community together for something positive. They need to know they’re valued and worthwhile.”
Johnson, a former AT&T manager, said the news of the shooting left her sad and wondering what causes such hatred.
“It bothers me for my grandchildren — what are their lives going to be like?” she asked as a long line of cars carrying current and hopeful politicos rolled by. “Are people going to look at my grandchildren — who are beautiful — and think they have no value? Are they going to end up dead?” ‘New Jim Crow’
Among the parade marchers was 44-year-old Eric Douglas. He walked down the street with several other protesters, bullhorn in hand, dressed in black with a gold Batman image emblazoned on his T-shirt.
“Old Jim Crow, new Jim Crow, this racist system has to go!” they chanted, as paradegoers slurped on snow cones and Italian ice nearby, at the corner of Holman and Live Oak.
“We celebrate Juneteenth because it was supposed to be an emancipation of the black race,” he said, afterwards. “But for the last 50 years, it appears to be an illusion. It’s a lie.”
He, too, was thinking about the recent events in Charleston, and the lesson he said Roof failed to understand.
“When you crucify someone ... We come together in pain, in sorrow, in spirit,” he said. “The good news is the coming together. The resolve, that allows us to live together.”