Festival combines fun and history

Joy was quickly building up Saturday morning at Comanche Park #2 as hundreds began to gather for the second day of the 2021 Juneteenth Festival, which returned this year after being one of the many events forced to take a break in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Last year, we couldn’t do it and it was disappointing, but we did something at home with our family,” said Doloris Williams, known to her family and friends as Mamma D.

Williams, 87, has attended the event since it began in 1995, and said she truly missed seeing familiar faces that she sometimes gets to see only once a year. On Saturday morning, she sat and chatted with her friends Susan Glosson, 68, and Charla Hutchens, 70, as people

danced, ate and visited about a dozen vendors who were starting to open their shops.

The two-day event is a celebration of Black culture, legacy, tradition and influence, said Byron Miller, Juneteenth commissioner and the event organizer. The festival started at 11 a.m. and was set to end at 11 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday.

This is the first time Fiesta is happening during Juneteenth — due to pandemicrelated delays — prompting some concerns over attendance. But on Saturday, Miller wasn’t worried. After having about 3,000 attendees on Friday, he expected at least double that amount Saturday.

But something else was different this year.

Just days before, President Joe Biden signed a bill to make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday. The recognition was welcomed by many who attended Saturday’s festivities, but it also came with words of caution.

“Do not get distracted,” Miller told the crowd in his opening remarks. “We asked for justice, and they gave us a holiday. We asked for reparations, and they gave us a holiday. We were asking for voting rights … they gave us a holiday.”

The holiday commemorates June 19, 1865, the day that Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston Bay to read General Order 3, which proclaimed that all slaves were free. The news came more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

While the event was about celebrating freedom, Miller said an important lesson on Juneteenth is that there is no freedom without information. So this event was also about reminding attendees of the importance of staying informed about what is happening now and what history has taught us.

“If you don’t remember your past, you’ll repeat it,” said Hutchens, who has attended the event for more than 20 years. “You don’t repeat your past, you do better. And if you know where you come from, you know where you’ve got to go.”

On Saturday, Miller kicked off the event by addressing the growing crowd at around noon, before passing the microphone to local teen pageant queens who also welcomed attendees, and elected officials — including state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio; District 2 Councilman Jalen Mckee-Rodriguez; and County Clerk Lucy AdameClark — who also spoke of the importance of being informed.

Pandemic-related changes remained visible as some walked around with masks, others shopped for new ones with a small vendor and, right at the event’s entrance, people bared their arms to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

This celebration has always been about coming together and reuniting as a community, but the Black community has always been forced to go deeper and “appeal to the intelligence of America,” Miller said.

“There’s always some more we’ve got to do,” Miller said. “This is a very complicated holiday; it’s complex.”

Next year, Miller hopes to add to the celebration by not only having the traditional Juneteenth Festival, but also a Texas Freedom Festival in New Braunfels that will combine Juneteenth and July 4, with a goal of using the festivities to continue spreading information.

“When you understand your history and when you understand where you come from, that understanding gives you purpose,” Miller said.