San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘HOW FAR WE’VE COME’
AME church a centerpiece of Junteenth march
Equipped with water bottles and large sunhats, a small, enthusiastic group of longtime members of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church and San Antonio River Authority officials braved the Saturday morning heat for a Juneteenth celebration downtown.
The Rev. Alvin Smith, the church’s pastor, was among those taking part in the milelong march from the archaeological site of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church at the West Houston Street Bridge to the church’s current location on the near West Side.
“Hopefully, it brings us closer together,” Smith said of the march as the morning’s festivities got underway.
Some of the attendees skipped the marching part and piled onto a golf cart that led the pack, which was largely made up of church members and SARA employees but included a handful of other San Antonio community members.
The foundation of St. James AME Church, one of the oldest Black churches in the state, was discovered in 2020 during construction of the San Pedro Culture Park and is now being preserved. SARA worked with the church, which was founded in 1867, to help incorporate the foundation into the park’s design.
“Not only is it a historical moment for St. James AME Church, but it’s a historical moment for African Americans in the city of San Antonio,” Smith told attendees at the start of the march as he stood in front of the foundation that had a string of yellow construction flags surrounding it. “Because now we feel that we have a piece of that pie that makes us the historical San Antonio that we are.”
The Saturday march was just one of many ways San Antonians were celebrating Juneteenth this holiday weekend;
others went to festivals while some headed to the ballpark for a game Saturday.
Juneteenth was celebrated as a federal and city holiday for the first time last year. In September, it became a Bexar County holiday.
It commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to announce that two years earlier President Abraham Lincoln had abolished slavery.
On Saturday, the Rev. Cynthia Rodgers, 59, walked arm-in-arm with George White, a 75-yearold blind church member, helping to guide him through busy downtown streets.
Rodgers has been part of the church her whole life. She said she thinks it’s beautiful that officials changed their original construction plans to properly honor St. James and its place in history when the foundation was discovered.
“This shows how far we’ve come,” Rodgers said, “and shows us that the city loves us, and that we matter.”
When the marchers arrived at their current church on North Richter
Street, they rested on folding chairs set up under canopies in the parking lot as the next phase of the day’s celebration got underway. St. James’ bell rang as church leadership stood at a microphone to pray for past church officials, victims of the COVID-19 pandemic and people who were killed in the Uvalde school shooting and Charleston, S.C. church shooting. The seventh anniversary of the tragedy at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston was on Friday.
This weekend also marks the return of inperson services at St. James — Smith said the church had been hosting only virtual services since the start of the pandemic but would reopen its doors to its 300-person congregation on Sunday.
Smith said the march may become an annual event in the future.
Derek Boese, 48, helped stop traffic at crosswalks as marchers weaved through downtown. Boese, general manager of the river authority, was one of the several SARA officials in attendance. The organization’s public art curator Carrie Brown also attended; she worked with church leadership to organize the event.
“We feel honored to be part of it and to celebrate this holiday with them and provide the start of the march and space for people to gather,” Brown said.
Johnnie Davis, 71, said the Juneteenth event was a way to honor the founders of St. James and the denomination overall for “what they’ve done and what they created,” noting that they faced challenges as newly free people.
“For me, today was an expression of appreciation,” she said, “and acknowledging that there had been a struggle that they overcame, and that they actually thrived and survived during that time.”