Island Juneteenth
by Frances Kartunen
For more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, people continued to labor under slavery in the cotton fields of Texas. Then on June 19, 1865, a Union general stood on a balcony in Galveston and read aloud General Order Number Three. It said, "The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."
From that time on, “Juneteenth” was celebrated every year by freedmen and their descendants in Texas. Juneteenth became an official holiday in Texas in 1980. Long before that date, this joyous celebration of African-American history and endurance had spread out to neighboring states, and it is spreading still.
On the afternoon of June 16, Juneteenth will be observed in the African Meeting House on Nantucket with guest Jamele Adams, an assistant dean at Brandeis University. Educator Adams is also activist, actor, and poet Harlym125. As 1two5 he first found his way to slam poetry in Ohio and then went on to New York City, where he has been twice named Nyuorican Poet slam champion.
On Saturday from 2 to 3 pm., he will be joined by local singers and performers at the Meeting House on the corner of York and Pleasant Streets. After the performance, refreshments will be offered on the lawn of the Meeting House. This event is sponsored by the Museum of African American History in Boston.
Previous Juneteenth celebrations on Nantucket date to 1995, when Joan Wilson, Helen Seager, and Lyn Danforth showed the film On My Own: the Tradition of Daisy Turner in the Quaker Meeting House on Fair Street. Subsequently there was a Juneteenth Community Barbecue on the grounds of the Point Breeze Hotel in support of the restoration of the African Meeting House.
Back in 1995, in "Visions of the Twenty-first Century at the African Meeting House on Nantucket,” it was suggested that Juneteenth be celebrated there on a regular basis. Site manager Sharon Liburd has announced that this has now been made reality. Nantucketers can expect annual Juneteenth observances.
This year’s June celebrations of Black history on Nantucket will continue next weekend with cemetery tours, unveiling of a historical plaque, and the 2007 James Bradford Ames Lecture in the African Meeting House.
