Solstice Saturday: Juneteenth

I confess I am a terrible person because I didn’t even know Juneteenth existed until last year. This is pretty ridiculous considering I lived in Texas for four years and the holiday started there…but there you go. I am all the better for my fledgling knowledge. And this holiday is an excellent one that should take its message nationwide.

Juneteenth commemorates the day word finally reached Galveston, Texas that the Civil War had ended and the slaves had been freed. Nobody had bothered to tell the Texans about the Emancipation Proclamation before that (but then, the Texans didn’t really want to hear about it, anyway). It was unfortunate that the celebration this year happened to fall on the same day as every other festival on the Island, but turnout was still decent considering that factor.

The event was very low-key–people gathered for a quick meal and reception at a restaurant in downtown Oak Bluffs–but was still powerful and moving. Also, Carole Simpson (formerly of ABC News) was the main speaker. This was quite awesome. She did three costume changes during her speech (I talked to her afterward and she said that after giving “thousands of speeches,” she wanted to jazz it up a little this time), going from a modern African-American woman to a slave woman to a free slave woman in Southern garb. In between one of these changes, Grant Meacham, who’s a high school senior here, read Frederick Douglass’ Fourth of July speech. Also awesome. He does theater and is going to Scotland this summer to perform with a group of other high schoolers. So cool!

These are basically all from the same angle because there was a table full of food in my way. Can’t win sometimes.