Jubilee Juneteenth: how our people celebrated freedom time

Black Issues Book Review, May-June, 2003 by Angela P. Dodson

Then she runs to the field 'gainst marster's will and tol' all the other slaves and they quit work.

--Tempie Cummins, Jasper, Texas, quoted in Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom, edited by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau and Steven F. Miller, the New Press with The Library of Congress, W. W. Norton & Company; Book and Cassette edition, October 1998, ISBN 1-565-84425-4

"Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We was free. Just like that we was free. It didn't seem to make the whites mad either. They went right on giving us food just the same. Nobody took our homes away, but right off colored folks started on the move. They seemed to want to get closer to freedom, so they'd know what it was--like it was a place or a city."

--Felix Haywood, Texas, quoted in Unchained Memories: Readings From the Slave Narratives, Bulfinch Press, February 2003, ISBN 0-821-22842-0

WHAT IS HELD AS FACT IS THAT JUNE NINETEENTH--the day the federal troops rode into Galveston with orders to release those kept as slaves has been celebrated for 127 years, in Texas and beyond, as Emancipation Day, as Jubilation Day, as Juneteenth, the day the last ones heard.

Juneteenth, the name, is one of those fab African-Americanisms, functional, rhythmic, at once concise and not too concise. It fuses the month of June with the number nineteen, and eludes to the fact that the holiday was held in adjoining states on different days of the month as folks got the word."

--"Juneteenth" by Lisa Jones, excerpted in The African American Book of Values, edited with commentary by Steven Barboza, Doubleday September 1998, ISBN 0-385-48259-0

IN THEIR PAJAMAS AND NIGHT GOWNS, THEY WOULD gather around Papa, who would read Bible stories aloud. Sometimes Papa would tell them about the day that the Civil War ended in 1865. This meant that the slaves were truly free. Papa was just seven years old. He said he ran about the house yelling, `Freedom! Freedom! I am free! I am free!"

--The Delany Sisters: Reach High by Amy Hill Hearth, Abingdon Press, January 2003, ISBN 0-687-03074-9

"THERE WAS A GREAT OUTCRYIN. THE BENT BACKS straighted up. Old and young who were called slaves and could fly joined hands. Say like they would ring-sing. But they didn't shuffle in a circle. They didn't sing. They rose on the air. They flew in a flock that was black against the heavenly blue. Black crows or black shadows. It didn't matter. They went so high. Way above the plantation, way over the slavery land. Say they flew away to Free-dom.

--The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales told by Virginia Hamilton, Knopf (1985), January 1993, ISBN 0-679-84336-1

AND YOU SHALL HALLOW THE FIFTIETH YEAR AND you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family.

--Leviticus 25:10 New Revised Standard Bible