San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Celebration of Juneteenth is official now
The Bay Area celebrated the nation’s newest official holiday — Juneteenth — on Saturday with barbecues, bouncy houses, martial arts demonstrations, music and the opening of a small museum featuring a popup exhibit on the Black Panthers.
Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation 2½ years earlier, setting them free.
“It’s almost like the Fourth of July,” said Barbara Brown, 70, a 42yearOakland resident who belonged to the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. “It’s the day of emancipation for African Americans. It’s a day to celebrate.”
Brown spoke with The Chronicle on Huey P. Newton Way, a commemorative block of Ninth Street in West Oakland where Newton was fatally shot. On Saturday, it was also the site of a block party to mark the opening of the 1,000square foot Mini Museum in a home that’s covered with a mural honoring the women of the Black Panther Party. Elsewhere around the bay — in the Bayview in San Francisco, at Lake Merritt in Oakland, off Solano Avenue in Albany, in Healdsburg, Los Altos, Hayward and other places — people observed Juneteenth with organized commemorations and backyard gatherings.
The celebrations came just two days after President Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth, or June 19th, the 12th federal holiday. Black communities have celebrated Juneteenth for more than a century, but its importance has become more widely recognized in recent years.
Biden’s declaration followed a particularly difficult year in the campaign for civil rights, with nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a pandemic that disproportionately infected and economically destabilized people of color.
“Juneteenth brings muchneeded awareness to the historic struggles faced by African Americans while recommitting our country to addressing systemic racism and the economic hurdles that remain before African Americans today,” state Sen. Bill Dodd of Napa said in a statement.
This year’s remembrance was marked by a few firsts.
Santa Clara County on Friday became the first California county to make Juneteenth a paid holiday. For the first time, Marin County hosted two events marking the day enslaved people learned of their freedom. And outside the State Capitol in Sacramento, criminal reform advocates summoned the day’s symbolism to rally against what they call involuntary servitude in the state prison system.
On Huey Newton Way in West Oakland on Saturday, where a crowd of several dozen people gathered, many said the day was one of joy, love and community despite the nation’s historical and continued mistreatment of Black people.
M. Gayle “Asali” Dickson, another former Black Panther, acknowledged skeptics who say that the Juneteenth holiday declaration is merely a gesture.
“It’s symbolic, but it is good symbolism,” she said. “Because at the same time we are hearing from the other sides that we don’t need critical race theory, don’t need ‘1619’ (a longform New York Times project reexamining American history regarding Black people) in our schools. The thing is, for the history of America to include the truth, this is important, this is a good opportunity. We’ve been denying America’s history.”
Remediation and reparation still need to take place, Dickson said, and the Black community and its supporters must maintain pressure on their political representatives.
“Folks have to realize that we need to be vigilant,” she said. “We need to hold them to their word.”
Around the corner, people lined up to visit the lower floor of Jilchristina Vest’s house, which she turned into the Mini Museum, featuring an initial exhibit on the Black Panthers and their campaigns to bring free food, free ambulance services, a free community school and a variety of other free programs to the Black community.
On the street, next to a food truck giving away free empanadas, the Men of Iron, a West Oakland group that teaches a mix of military drills and martial arts to young Black men, gave a demonstration, briefly dueling with sticks and showing off some marching drills.
“We take kids and give them a foundation of honor, love and respect,” said Ken McCullum, a retired Alameda County sheriff ’s deputy and head instructor of the nearly 14yearold program.
Daseia McCoy, 27, of Oakland came to watch her 7yearold son, Jeremiah, perform. She said Juneteenth has long been a day for Black people to celebrate their ancestors being freed, and that she’s happy to see the rest of America officially joining the celebration.
“It’s a celebration of our ancestors being freed,” she said. “It’s a happy day, a nojudgment day where everybody gets along . ... It’s been going on for a long time, but it’s just getting known to a lot of people now.”