How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

As Republicans abandoned the Black community, Reconstruction was dismantled. Black American second-class citizenship was recodified through Jim Crow laws and enforced through the omnipresent threat of violence, and Juneteenth celebrations were not only unwelcome but often dangerous. With the threat of lynching always there for Black Southerners, some celebrations across the country disappeared from public view and into private homes and Black churches. And as the decades went by and Black Americans still had nothing close to full equality, to some, Juneteenth seemed like an unfulfilled promise. In 1941, the Houston Informer, a Black newspaper, wrote, “Negroes are not sure whether to be gay on ‘Juneteenth’ or to observe the day with sadness. They do not know whether they are actually free here.” By the early 1970s, Juneteenth celebrations slowly began to reemerge as local cultural organizations throughout Texas, and throughout the country, began to lift up the holiday as a way to celebrate Black culture and Black history. In 1979, newly elected Texas state legislator Al Edwards Sr. introduced House Bill 1016, which would make June 19th a state holiday. Over the course of four months Edwards built a diverse coalition of support across the state legislature. As one Juneteenth celebrant put it, “Even if the American people in the United States didn’t really set that day aside for us, I believe they owe it to us anyway …they ought to give the colored man a day for his freedom. ...