Arizona historian explains importance of Juneteenth Day

Matthew C. Whitaker, founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Arizona State University spoke about the history and celebration of Juneteenth Day – June 19 – on Nevada Public Radio’s “State of Nevada,” with host Dave Becker.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval recently signed legislation making his state the 39th in the nation to recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday. Juneteenth is marked by African Americans and others around the world as a day to celebrate the end of slavery and to commemorate the contributions of African Americans in society.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, declaring "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." However, it wasn’t until June 19, 1865, that Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas, with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were free.

Whitaker, an associate professor of history at ASU, told radio listeners that “jubilation was the reaction of most” of those in east Texas when they learned of the news. However, that emotional reaction was “quickly followed by reality of ‘What do we do next.?’”

According to Whitaker, many of the newly freed slaves “immediately set out to find family members who had been ripped from them, they had been separated during slavery. In east Texas and throughout the Deep South after slavery, there were just scores of African Americans walking on feet looking for wives that had been sold away, or daughters or sons or husbands.”

Whitaker shared with “State of Nevada” listeners that African Americans weren’t the only residents trying to figure out what to do. So were many other Texans, especially women on plantations whose husbands were killed in the war, who had come to rely on slaves to keep the plantations going. The exodus of former slaves was a blunt reality to the economy of Texas and the South, said Whitaker, who teaches in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Juneteenth is now celebrated across the United States and in many foreign countries with traditional Southern food, dance and poetry reading, noted Whitaker.

A podcast of the radio interview, which also includes comments from the Rev. Ronald V. Myers Sr., M.D., chairman of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation and the national Juneteenth Christian Leadership Council, is at http://www.knpr.org/son/archive/detail2.cfm?SegmentID=7942&ProgramID=2257.

More information about Juneteenth is at http://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm.