Juneteenth comes this year at a time when the nation is reacting to many incidents of police violence that have killed black people and when Black Lives Matter protests have been occurring worldwide as a result.
For many years, a public gathering in Roswell to talk about June 19, 1865 was held by members of a local Black History Committee and relatives of the founders of Blackdom, an African American community that existed from 1901 to the late 1920s about 20 miles south of Roswell.
June 19, 1865, is the day when slaves in Texas, the last Confederate-controlled state, finally received word from Union Army soldiers that they had been freed — freed two and half years earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation that had taken effect Jan. 1, 1863, and had been signed by President Abraham Lincoln.
This year, a public Juneteenth event for the Roswell area has not been announced. People involved in prior years’ ceremonies have said that family circumstances have led them to choose not to hold a commemoration this year.
Juneteenth events are scheduled today for Albuquerque and Las Vegas, and numerous online events and programs are occurring, including a series of talks organized by the New Mexico Black History Organizing Committee, based in Albuquerque (www.nmblackhistorymonth.com). A Black Lives Matter rally is also planned for Carlsbad tonight at the courthouse.
“I think it is important because history has to be told,” said Helen Wakefield of Roswell about Juneteenth. She once was a board officer of the Juneteenth Nebraska committee, and this year she organized a local Black History Month event.
Several Chaves County residents were given an opportunity to talk about Juneteenth.
Wakefield said she thinks the commemoration is important because the past cannot be overcome until it is faced.
“Until we, as a people, as a totality, bring to light what the truths are, not the watered down version, but what the truths are,” she said, “we will not be able to come to the table and discuss how we move forward.”
Juneteenth’s growing prominence
According to the Smithsonian Institution, Juneteenth has been celebrated by some communities and some groups every year since 1865.
But it began to gain national prominence only recently. A history by the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation indicates that Congress passed a resolution in 1997 declaring Juneteenth Independence Day in the United States each year on June 19.
