By PAMELA GRANT
Cove Leader-Press
This year marked 160 years since Juneteenth and people around the nation held their own celebrations marking the occasion.
This year, the Copperas Cove Public Library hosted their first Juneteenth Freedom Celebration Saturday starting at noon, as the library was closed on Juneteenth itself.
The celebration focused on enjoying good food and company, and a bit of a history lesson on what Juneteenth is, what it represents, and about the history surrounding the freeing of the slaves.
“It was an interesting challenge to put together a program that would be fun and exciting and also teach a whole bunch of history,” said library director Kevin Marsh who gave a small presentation about the history behind Juneteenth.
He began with the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, which declared enslaved people in Confederate-held territory free.
“How many slaves did that free—none,” said Marsh. “But it was an important legal step, but it didn’t have any practical effect.”
After four years of bloody battle, the Confederacy officially surrendered April 9, 1865. After about four years of the Civil War, approximately 335,000 people were killed in the north and 260,000 were killed in the south.
It took time for news to travel, and the word finally hit Galveston Texas June 19, 1865. Major General Gordon Granger and his mostly African American troops delivered the news that all of the slaves were to be freed and issued General Order Number 3. This declared all slaves to be free and gave them equality of personal rights and rights of property, but it advised them to remain at their present homes and work for wages. They were not to collect at military posts and said that they would not be supported in idleness.
The economy in the south was in poor shape after the war, and there weren’t a lot of wages to go around making things even more difficult for the newly freed slaves.
The freed slaves had a limited number of jobs that they could do. The easiest option for many was sharecropping. It was less risky, and, for many, may have been the best choice of the available bad choices.
Some could get a career with a skilled trade. It was economically more successful, and some were able to prosper, but others still faced a lot of prejudice.
“While the sharecropping and deep poverty images are correct, these images of quick, short-term success are also correct. Some people were able to prosper very quickly,” said Marsh.
Another option was to join a “freedom colony” like Lincolnville, a colony that was located in Coryell County near Gatesville in 1865 after county judge John Walker Mayberry set aside some land for his own freed slaves.
Many freed slaves opted to do cowboy work, which African Americans historically made up a substantial portion.
“On the frontier, if you could get the job done, people weren’t too concerned about the color of your skin or how good your English grammar was. If you could keep the cows together and if you could stay on a horse for 16 hours a day…it was hard work, but there was less prejudice for frontier work,” said Marsh.
For her part, Copperas Cove Mayor Pro Tem Vonya Hart talked about Opal Lee, considered the grandmother of Juneteenth. She raised awareness of Juneteenth, starting an annual 2.5-mile walk symbolizing the 2.5 years that it took for news of freedom to reach the enslaved people in Texas. In 2016 she met with former President Barack Obama about making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Finally, in 2021, President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Hart said that she thought the Juneteenth celebration was something that people need.
“This has significance for people in our community—the people that you live with, the people that you work with, the people that we share our lives with every day,” said Hart. “This is a celebration of freedom and I think that’s very important.”
Hart said that she loved seeing how many people showed up to support Saturday’s Juneteenth celebration. She said that she really appreciated Marsh for putting together the event and how he reached out to the community for help in making sure the event could be as successful as possible.
Dardreatiss Jose attended the event with her husband, Sherwin Jose, and their daughter, NiAsia Jose. NiAsia recently won 3rd place for her poem in the Texas Tri-City Juneteenth Celebration
She said that it was important to her to support Saturday’s event. She said celebrating Juneteenth is good because it’s important to know where we came from and where we are going. She said that it was all about new beginnings, and that’s worth celebrating. NiAsia also enjoyed the celebration.
“She enjoyed it because she got to meet new friends and enjoyed good food,” said Jose.
“I really appreciate the concern from the library and spotlighting an event like this for the community,” said Sherwin Jose. He said that he appreciated the library taking the time to show the history and use it to unite the community and to support a group of people who may sometimes feel like they are in the shadows.
“We’ve done book displays for Black History Month and things like that, but we’ve never had a celebration like this,” said Marsh. “It’s a piece of history that is easy to gloss over. We say Juneteenth was the emancipation of slaves, but what does that mean. Having the party gave us the opportunity to talk about some of the realities of the time, the strategies that people used, and how that led to today. Maybe it gave people some things to think about and maybe gave them some things to go read a book about.”
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