Which celebration of freedom is true for Florida? All of them
When Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reed learned that people outside her home state of Texas were celebrating Juneteenth, she was a little annoyed, she confesses in her new book, a compact collection of essays titled “On Juneteenth.”
Gordon-Reed’s possessiveness sprung from a childhood steeped in seeing Texas as special. But this historian of slavery, whose African American family has deep roots to slavery times in Texas, found her proprietary attitude melting away.
“It’s a very Texas move to say something that happened in our state was of enough consequence to the nation that it be celebrated,” she writes.
And so this June 19, events across Central Florida and the nation will commemorate the end of slavery in the United States, marking not Jan. 1, 1863, the date when Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became official, but June 19, 1865 — the day more than two years later when the news reached Galveston, Texas, and perhaps the nation’s last enslaved people to learn they had been freed.
These days, news travels almost too fast, with the click of a “send” button, but in the 1860s it could take months or even years for life-changing news to reach across the continent.
Today, the Juneteenth of Texas (“June” plus “nineteenth”) has become “the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States,” as historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. notes.
Emancipation Day
Though Juneteenth had long been a celebration, it was only 25 years ago that it became more widely observed.
Some north Florida cities have long marked and still celebrate May 20 as “Emancipation Day” — the anniversary of the day Union Gen. Edward M. McCook announced President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
from the steps of the Knott House in Tallahassee, effectively ending slavery in the state.
Photos of parades document Emancipation Day celebrations in St. Augustine in the 1920s, and early newspaper clippings also describe events such as a large Pensacola picnic in 1900, the destination of folks on boating excursions from Birmingham and Mobile.
In the Orlando area during the early 20th century, Emancipation Day meant Jan. 1 — the anniversary of the 1863 date when Lincoln’s proclamation became official. On that day, New Year’s Day, in 1915, for example, the Orlando Evening Star reported “a long procession of vehicles and floats headed by a band.” The celebration included groups of “school children singing in honor of freedom’s day.”
In Florida, especially, where May 20 and Jan. 1 both have a long history of commemorations about the end of slavery, in addition to the Texas favorite, June 19, which date is correct? It’s a question posed in an essay on Juneteenth and Emancipation Day at the State Archives of Florida website, FloridaMemory.com.
We’ll agree with the conclusion noted there — they’re all good. When it comes to celebrating freedom, you can’t go wrong.
Juneteenth in Winter Park
On June 19, the Hannibal Square Heritage Center, Winter Park Public Library and Winter Park Parks and Recreation Department will present a Juneteenth celebration titled “Knowing and Remembering” at the Winter Park Community Center, 721 W. New England Ave. It’s scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will feature guest speakers, live performances and food trucks.
The Hannibal Square Heritage Center at 642 W. New England Ave., Winter Park, is also hosting an opening reception in the center’s galleries for the exhibition titled “Preserving the Past and Looking Toward the Future: A Celebration of Hannibal Square.” To schedule a private tour of the Heritage Center, contact Barbara Chandler at 321-594-3922 or bchandler@crealde.org. Tours are available from 12:30 to 1 p.m., 2 to 2:30 p.m., and 3:30 to 4 p.m. For more info, visit hannibalsquareheritagecenter.org/