It’s been a year since Gov. Ralph Northam and multi-hyphenate Pharrell Williams addressed the commonwealth about Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates slavery’s end in the United States.
It stems from June 19, 1865, when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the last enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, more than two years after the executive order was issued by then-President Abraham Lincoln.
Standing next to the governor last June, Williams told his audience he hoped Juneteenth would come to be as celebrated as Independence Day.
He just might get his wish.
Northam declared Juneteenth a state holiday that afternoon and Williams immediately began pushing to get more states to recognize it. Wednesday night, Congress voted to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Had you searched for local Juneteenth events before last summer, your results were probably sparse.
Not this year.
Event calendars are packed with festivals, performances, memorials and block parties. Cities throughout the region are recognizing the day and on Friday closing city offices and libraries and have put together weeklong events both virtual and in person.
The programs aren’t just focusing on the holiday, though. Many of them are using it to expand education on slavery and how our country still struggles with the effects of it.
Sheri Bailey organizes one of the area’s longest-running Juneteenth festivals. She held the first one at Tidewater Community College’s Portsmouth campus in 1997.
“Back then, I heard a lot of, ‘June what? June who?’” Bailey said, chuckling at the memory. “No one knew what it was about.”
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With a focus on local history, Bailey’s been teaching attendees ever since.
Now taking place in Portsmouth’s Olde Towne, her festival includes oral histories and educational aspects to highlight the Nat Turner insurrection, Underground Railroad stops tied to our waterways and what she calls the “Dismal Swamp effect.”
“If you made it into the swamp, you were free,” she said. “They had a whole community of white, Black and Native people living together.”
It’s also the 20th anniversary of a stage production Bailey wrote called the “Abolitionists’ Museum,” in which “wax figurines” representing Harriet Tubman, Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, John Brown, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and David Walker debate whether they should burn a Confederate flag hung inside their museum. The performance will start at 3 p.m. on Saturday outside of Trinity Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, 500 Court St.
Public schools often fail to teach a more thorough history of slavery, she said, which is why she’s focusing on bringing her production to schools.
Bailey said it was gratifying to see Juneteenth become a state holiday. Not only will it bring more attention to the day, but it will promote more honest education for students and residents alike.
Bailey is from Portsmouth but moved to California after high school to work in the film industry. It was there that she learned about Juneteenth.
“I was out walking around and stumbled across a Juneteenth event and thought, what is that?” Bailey said. “It got me thinking a lot about how slavery started in our country and how much of that history is tied to my hometown.”
That realization is what led her to create the Portsmouth festival after she moved back home. Now in its 24th year, the festival’s mission is to “help America heal from the wounds of history without shame or blame.” Bailey aims to do that by giving people from all different walks of life the opportunity to talk and learn from one another.
“So much of the history in Hampton Roads represents the birth of America and there’s a rich, unique history that only we can tell,” she said. “Juneteenth became a great platform to look at that history and share it.”
Bailey isn’t the only one using the holiday to heal.
Also happening around the same time last summer were the nationwide protests in response to the killing of George Floyd.
Here in Norfolk, Quincy Peele and Brittni Stanfield were looking for a way to uplift the African American community as they struggled with another Black life lost at the hands of law enforcement.
“There was so much racial tension in the city and the surrounding area,” Peele said. “We had truly reached a boiling point.”
Brainstorming on what they could do to soothe stress, the two decided to throw a cookout. Then came Northam’s Juneteenth announcement.
The pair had heard about the holiday in passing before, but it prompted them to do their research.
“I learned about the origins of Juneteenth and that really resonated,” Peele said. “These slaves in Texas didn’t find out they were free until two years after they should’ve been.”
Stanfield said, “And being an adult and first hearing about it? It made me kind of mad when I thought about it.”
Juneteenth became the platform they used to build community and spread awareness last summer with their event, the Blackout Cookout. This year they’re back at it, adding more vendors, community resources and booths to register new voters. The cookout kicks off at 1 p.m. on Saturday at Norfolk’s Northside Park, 8400 Tidewater Drive.
They’re also focusing on mental health and will have counselors and other support staff on-site to help residents process the trauma and grief that comes with racism.
“Seeing situations like the police killings, that right there is enough to trigger someone,” said Stanfield, who works as a mental health counselor. “So many people are going through things and don’t even realize they could use assistance.”
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Over at Norfolk’s Selden Market, Drew Boyd and his organization, Tidewater Waves, partnered with the market’s staff to focus on supporting Black-owned businesses on Saturday. Those businesses don’t always get the same opportunities and support that white-owned businesses do, Boyd said, and that traces back to laws that made it illegal for enslaved people to read, write or own a business.
These laws, he said, were created solely “for the purpose of not allowing Black people to gain economic power.”
“Follow that up with things like the burning down of Black Wall Street in Oklahoma, a very real and important establishment in the progression of the Black community that was totally eradicated? We’re just making up for lost time now.”
Christy Coleman, the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation executive director, said it is also using the holiday to examine slavery’s origins. This year, the Jamestown Settlement will host music, dance performances and historical portrayals.
Almost 250 years before the last enslaved people were freed, the first recorded Africans in the British North American colony were brought to Jamestown after landing at Old Point Comfort at Fort Monroe in Hampton.
“The connection is that what happens in the subsequent years is we begin to see codified, very different status and behavior even if slavery itself is not technically defined,” Coleman said.
The first codifications in Virginia showed up by 1636. In 1640, race-based bondage became a reality. Three servants, two white men and one Black man named John Punch, attempted to escape. The three were caught and the white men were punished by having their contracts as indentured servants extended.
Meanwhile, Punch, Coleman said, was whipped and ordered to be held as a servant for life.
In Hampton, Marie St. Clair and the Fragments of Freedom Theatre Production’s spoken word performance, “Juneteenth: Emancipation and Celebration,” will show the problems newly freed enslaved people faced.
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Emancipation wasn’t as easy as it sounds, she said. Not every enslaved person became free with the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, only those living in areas of rebellion against the United States and not under the Union’s control.
Using five fictional characters, St. Clair details the history of Juneteenth, how it came to be and the struggles the five Black citizens had in finding freedom, and some of the barriers that are still in place today. They’ll talk about pursuing education, owning land and their efforts to reconnect with family members. They’ll even talk about those who were reluctant to leave the plantations behind for fear of what they’d encounter on their own.
“They were freed, sure, but they had to figure out what to do next,” St. Clair said. “You dreamed of it, you thought about it all the time, but what do you do when that moment comes?”
The virtual production will stream on Wednesday evening but is accessible on demand by visiting the Hampton History Museum’s Facebook page.
Like Bailey, St. Clair and her castmates are focusing on connecting the holiday with local history.
“The last poet will take us into the present time and how a lot of these needs, passions and desires are still in place today,” she said.
It’s important to open up that conversation, she said, because the country doesn’t talk enough about “what happens after slavery.”
St. Clair said the Reconstruction era was a pivotal moment for Black people because they had new opportunities. Then came the Jim Crow laws, which, among other things, enforced legalized segregation and were in play from the 1870s to the 1960s. They upheld biased racial hierarchies and ensured Black Americans were kept at lower status than white citizens.
“It just took all of those rights away,” St. Clair said.
The societal shift in the last year gives St. Clair hope. Seeing the protests related to Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the economic fallout from COVID collide exposed racial economic disparities.
“Black people went to the streets and said we cannot live in this environment anymore,” St. Clair said. “And this time, more people in places of power seem to be saying ‘We hear you.’”
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City officials in Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Newport News have all added programming this year to commemorate the holiday.
Newport News Vice Mayor Saundra Cherry said this is the first year the city has teamed up with the Downtown Newport News Merchants and Neighbors Association to host a week’s worth of events.
“We’re talking about education, awareness and commemoration,” Cherry said. “Unity in the community with the overall arching goal of not just giving our employees a day off, but educating people about what this holiday really means.”
Cherry also points to the historical significance of the region, including the Emancipation Oak at Hampton University. Cherry said there are too many people who aren’t aware the Emancipation Proclamation was read underneath that tree or that there’s a seedling taken from it and planted outside B.T. Washington Middle School in Newport News.
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She likens that seedling to the resilience of the enslaved people Juneteenth commemorates.
“We were strong people,” she said. “And the seedling is strong, beautiful.”
Weekend Scoop
The holiday is culturally relevant to all of the city’s residents, she said, and the city has included programming to reflect that and encourage conversation between people of all races, like Friday night’s “A Journey to Freedom: A Juneteenth Production,” which will air on Cox Channel 48 (Verizon Channel 19), and on the city’s Facebook and YouTube pages.
It might put some tension in the room or make some folks a little bit emotional, but it can be incredibly productive and enlightening for some.
“We have to look at how this history of slavery involves all of us,” she said.
Juneteenth events
Friday
- “A Journey to Freedom: A Juneteenth Production.” 7 to 9 p.m. Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center, 2410 Wickham Ave., Newport News. Available online at youtube.com/newportnewstv and facebook.com/newportnewsTV.
Saturday
- #VBArts on Tour Pop Up Performances. Begins at 9 a.m. ViBe District, 611 18th St., Virginia Beach.
- Waterways to Freedom Tour, a walking tour of Underground Railroad sites in Norfolk. 9:30-11 a.m. 500 E. Main St., Norfolk. Register online at bit.ly/waterwaytour.
- Juneteenth Celebration at Selden Market. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 208 E. Main St., Norfolk.
- Juneteenth Jam. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Cradock Skate Park. 4117 George Washington Highway, Portsmouth.
- Freedom Festival. Noon to 4 p.m. King-Lincoln Park, 600 Jefferson Ave., Newport News.
- Celebrating Juneteenth. Noon to 6 p.m. Trinity Episcopal Church, 500 Court St., Portsmouth.
- Juneteenth Solstice Festival. Noon to 10 p.m. Smartmouth Brewing Company, 1309 Raleigh Ave., Norfolk.
- Blackout Cookout. 1-7 p.m. Northside Park, 8400 Tidewater Drive, Norfolk.
- Juneteenth at Jamestown. 2 p.m. Robins Foundation Theater, 2110 Jamestown Road, Williamsburg.
- William & Mary’s Virtual Juneteenth Celebration. 2 p.m. Online. Information at wm.edu/sites/juneteenth/program/index.php.
- Colonial Williamsburg Conversation: Juneteenth. 4 p.m. Online at colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/us-series.
Sunday
- African American Music Month Celebration. 3:30-5 p.m. Renaissance Academy Grounds, 5100 Cleveland St., Virginia Beach.
Amy Poulter, 757-446-2705, amy.poulter@pilotonline.com