Let me start by saying thank you for the invitation to speak with all of you and to, I guess, virtually welcome you all to the UMass Amherst campus behind me this afternoon. I'm going to talk a little bit, and I'll share my screen in a minute, to give you some history of June 19, 1865, the day that became known as Juneteenth, and then I will spend a good amount of time talking about why it's significant as a holiday, right? The symbolic significance of Juneteenth as well as the historical significance. 

So let me start with the screen share and we'll hope that goes smoothly. There we go. Perfect. OK. So we can think about June 19, 1865, the day we know as Juneteenth, as a meaningful historical moment and also a monumental symbolic moment in the history of African-Americans' struggle for freedom and citizenship in the United States. 

And this is a struggle, as President Meehan mentioned, my current research is looking at the earlier generations of that struggle in the era of the American Revolution when enslaved people of African descent and free people of African descent embraced that Anglo American rhetoric of liberty and independence that animated the American Revolution and pushed to have those ideals of personal independence, legal rights for individuals, extend to African-Americans as well. 

But what we know one of the outcomes of the American Revolution that will get us to Juneteenth in a minute, is that in early America, in the 19th century, from the time of the revolution on, Anglo Americans, white Americans, mainly men, but also women, understood that their individual liberties and freedoms, their legal rights of personhood and citizenship in the individual states and in the nation were more meaningful because they weren't universally enjoyed, right? 

That is that free men had control over free women, to be sure, and had the right to own Black people as property, right? The institution of slavery in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas was premised on an understanding that some people were legally defined as property, while other people who were legally defined as people had the right to own people as property. And that really becomes central to early American legal culture and social culture. 

And just to give you an example, in the United States Constitution, not everybody knows that the Constitution clearly recognizes that right to own people as property. It also recognizes the transatlantic slave trade. The Constitution sets a date for the end of the transatlantic slave trade. 

And so this idea of some people being recognized as persons and some people being deemed property is something that white and Black Americans, and Native Americans understand very well from the era of the American Revolution through the era of the American Civil War. 

And so this is, in large measure, why Juneteenth becomes so symbolically meaningful in our country's history, because it stands as a moment when those American ideals of freedom and of individual personhood and the rights of individual persons, it's on the cusp, right, the dawning of this moment when those ideals will be expanded to include about four million African-American women, men, and children who had been held in slavery, right? Who had been held as property. 

And so Juneteenth as a holiday gives us this opportunity to reflect on this changing moment in American history. And I think as President Meehan was just suggesting a few minutes ago, also I think gives us an opportunity to think about how we, as individuals as stewards of institutions, can make good on those ideals and commitments in our own local context, in our communities, in our work, and so forth. 

So I'd like to start with this image. This is an image of a woman named Mrs. Sally Fickland from 1947. She had been born into slavery, lived through the Civil War, and this is a picture from the National Archives in Washington, DC of her looking at the Emancipation Proclamation, right? And so you can imagine what that experience must have been like for her to see that document that sort of ushers in this moment of thinking about African-American freedom and citizenship. 

So-- oh, wait. Now we're having a little advancing problem. There we go. Juneteenth, June 19, 1865, so Juneteenth is the shortened version of June 19, is the date when Union forces arrive in Galveston, Texas. They actually arrive about a week and a half, two weeks before the 19th. 

Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered in April in Appomattox, Virginia. So here we are two months later, two months after the leader of the Confederacy has surrendered. Confederate soldiers in Texas, however, and I suppose if anyone is from Texas, they might reflect on this for a moment. But Confederate soldiers in Texas continue fighting, right? They don't fully acknowledge Lee's surrender in Texas. 

And so Union forces finally make their way to Galveston Harbor and declare Union victory over Texas as well in June. And it's at that point, then, that Major General Gordon Granger of the US military issues what becomes known as General Order Number 3, right? He's the commander of the Union Station in Galveston, and so he's issuing field orders that are establishing Union control over the territory that had formerly been in rebellion. 

And so this is the original document here, and here's a transcript of the salient points for our conversation today. So he announces, right, the people of Texas are informed that the proclamation from the President of the United States is that all slaves are free. And he says this involves absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves. 

And so that's important again, right? This recognizing that formerly enslaved people are now legally considered people rather than property and are entitled to their own possessions, right? So that might be things like clothing people have sewed for themselves or small crops. We know that enslaved people were sometimes able to grow small crops, not extensive crops, to supplement their food and nutrition, or people acquired limited goods that the Union is now recognizing that, as people, they are entitled to own property. 

I think it's also important to note, though, that Granger's order doesn't mark a monumental change in the economic order. It certainly doesn't mark a monumental change in social relations, right? You can see here he says, the freedmen, those are people who have just been declared free, are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages, right? That is to continue working for the people who had previously owned them. So this is not a declaration of a major social change. 

And you can see, again, some of the implicit, or not so implicit, I suppose, racist assumptions about Black people's place in post Civil War America, right? So he says, people are advised to remain at home quietly and work. So obviously, this is also assuming that former slave holders will pay those wages, which became a point of conflict. 

But it also says, they, meaning formerly enslaved people, will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere, meaning that the Union military and the federal government will not provide relief for them. That changes a little bit over time. But so this is not a vision of a dramatically reorganized society, but it's a really important symbolic moment when that last vestige of the Confederacy, that last farthest West region of the slaveholding South, is finally brought under union control after the Civil War and enslaved people are declared to be free. 

Neither Granger's orders-- and so this is sometimes a bit of a misconception. Neither Granger's statement on June 19 nor the Emancipation Proclamation from 1863 two years earlier really brought about those immediate changes in African-Americans' social and economic relationships to white Americans. 

And so I just thought I would include, because I'm a history professor so I can't help myself, a quick little summary of the Emancipation Proclamation. This is not the original document. This is an illustrated version, as it says at the top, facsimile. It's meant to look a little bit more dramatic and significant. 

And what the Emancipation Proclamation said on January 1, 1863, was that all persons held as slaves within any state that was in rebellion against the United States, so any of the Confederate states, would be declared free under military or Naval authority, right? So that freedom really required the presence of Union military forces to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, to enforce the liberation of enslaved people. 

The Emancipation Proclamation, if we were in one of my classes, I would make everybody remember for an exam and think about the Emancipation Proclamation doesn't include four states that stayed loyal to the Union in which slavery was legal, right? Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky side with the Union, right? Fight on the side of the North, but those are states in which slavery is legal. And so the Emancipation Proclamation does not extend to those states because they're not in rebellion. 

So the point of all of this is to underscore, again, the significance of Juneteenth and this long history of a creation of freedom in America that extends to African-Americans, right? There's not a single moment. January 1, 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation is not the single moment. June 19, 1865 is not the single moment. 

But as I said at the very beginning, these are dates that are part of an ongoing process in American history, an ongoing struggle to make freedom meaningful for people of African descent. Now, because we're in 橙子影院, I wanted to do a little bit of 橙子影院 relevant history for this. 

One of the things that we know is that early campaign in the Civil War to make freedom meaningful, right, to take this fight that's initially about preserving the Union and make it become a war that's about ending slavery, that conversation starts even before the Civil War with Black and white abolitionists who are pressing for the end of slavery. 

And immediately after the war begins in April 1861, it's enslaved people who immediately grasp the possibility and reality of liberating themselves, of freeing themselves, and by escaping to Union forces, and effectively pressing the Union to think about making them free, right? To think about protecting their freedom. I'm getting thunder here in Amherst, so if the electricity acts funny, you will know why. 

So this is just a picture of a camp that was called Freedmen's Village in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of the nation's capital, and what we know is probably about a quarter of a million, a half a million enslaved people gain their freedom during the war by escaping to Union forces. 

And one of the things-- and this is, of course, spurred by the Emancipation Proclamation and that promise of freedom under Union military control. The other thing the Emancipation Proclamation makes possible is the enlistment of African-American men in the Union military, right? 

And so for those who know 橙子影院 history, we know that 橙子影院 then organizes the 54th and 55th regiments that allow Black soldiers to enlist. And so here, for example, is just one of the posters that's calling on African-American men to enlist in the military, and this is a portrait of Lewis Douglass, who was one of Frederick Douglass' sons, who enlists in the 橙子影院 54th. 

So by the time General Granger gets to Texas, by the time of June 19, 1865, about a half million people had already escaped and freed themselves by getting to Union camps. And when they were there, men and women served as laborers. 

So men chopped down trees, cleared roads, drove wagons. Women worked as cooks, and nurses, laundresses, do cleaning uniforms, caring for the sick and injured, preparing food, things like that. And by the end of the war, about 200,000 Black men had enlisted in the Union Army and Navy. Mostly free men from the northern states, but also a good number of enslaved men were also enlisted. 

And so finally-- oops, that's too soon. Finally, slavery is legally abolished. Again, not on June 19, which seems to be a popular misconception, but not on June 19, but with the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution that's ratified in December 1865. And the trivia question I sometimes like to give is, which was the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment, and I believe it was Mississippi and I believe it was sometime in the early 1990s. 

But in 1865, enough states did ratify the 13th Amendment and it was enacted in December 1865, and that's the provision in the Constitution that formally abolishes slavery. African-Americans then gained citizenship, protection of their rights as citizens in the United States in the 14th Amendment, which isn't ratified until 1868, and that's the constitutional amendment that says no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. So that's where we get this idea of due process, and equal treatment, and equal protection under the law. 

So again, this long road towards freedom and citizenship, right? It's really a process and a process that results from deliberate and intentional actions by both African-Americans and their white allies, their white supporters and allies in state governments, in the federal government, and increasingly, in institutions. 

So freedom really becomes meaningful over time. And June 19, Juneteenth, stands symbolically as the important milestone in that journey. Juneteenth celebrations begin in Texas and Oklahoma in the 1870s, but are really part of a longer history of African-American culture, African-American political engagement, and African-American community life. 

So I want to just give you a couple of examples of some of the early pre-Juneteenth celebrations of freedom and then show you some images of some early Juneteenth celebrations. This is a broadside, a poster from 1851 from Worcester, I believe. 

In the early 19th century, free Black Americans in northern states, so places like 橙子影院, New York, Pennsylvania, celebrated that 1808 end of the transatlantic slave trade and then celebrated the 1834 British abolition of slavery in the west Indian colonies, places like Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda. Britain had all of those-- those islands in the Caribbean were sugar colonies for Great Britain. 

And Great Britain abolishes slavery in 1834, and Black Americans in the United States start to celebrate this, right? As a promising sign of the potential for freedom in the United States. And they celebrate it out of a sense of a global solidarity with other formerly enslaved people. 

So this is a poster from the 橙子影院 Anti-Slavery Society, August 1, 1851, advertising an event in Worcester. And these kind of events were common all across the northern states, right? And usually, there were speeches, and sermons, and then food, and festivities. Right here it says, let there be a large and enthusiastic gathering. The times demand it. 

Frederick Douglass, in 1855, attended an Emancipation Day celebration in New Bedford that he wrote extensively about in his newspaper. This is the house in New Bedford where Douglass and his wife Hannah first settle once he escapes from slavery in Maryland in 1838. 

And he writes about this 1855 emancipation celebration in New Bedford and says, it was the work of the colored citizens of New Bedford. White friends sympathized with them and rendered material aid, but the celebration and all of its belongings were the work of the colored people of that city. 

And then he goes on to describe the speeches and the people who gave the speeches, and he writes, he was really taken, I think, with what he describes as, quote, "a beautiful feature in the procession, the parade, a beautiful feature in the procession where the Sabbath school belonging to the Third Christian Church of New Bedford. Most of these children were neatly and elegantly attired. The girls especially made a handsome appearance adorned with wreaths and showy ribbons that were woven together with beautiful flowers." 

Right? So he's really taken with this display of beauty, of community coming together, of the Black community coming together to celebrate freedom, to hear the lectures and speeches. Douglass gave two speeches that day, one in the morning and one in the night. 

And so these celebrations, and we'll see in Juneteenth celebrations, really become an opportunity to celebrate African-American culture and communities, to celebrate the dignity, and pride, and beauty in Black communities, for people to engage in intellectual and political conversations that they might have been excluded from in the mainstream governments or institutions in their communities, that they create their own organizations to have conversations about the political events of the day, about great literature and philosophy. And so these are really common features that become part of Juneteenth celebrations. 

This is a picture from one of the earliest Juneteenth celebrations that we know about. This is from 1872 in Houston, in a park that's called Emancipation Park, right? So Emancipation Park. Should tell you everything you need to know about why this park was created. 

The park was created in 1872 by four men who had been enslaved, been emancipated after the Civil War, and in their community in Houston, raised $800 to buy 10 acres of land to create a park for the African-American community in Houston. Because by 1872, white lawmakers in Houston had already passed segregation measures, so Black people weren't allowed to access public space. 

So they pooled their resources to create their own public space, create their own park where they could gather. And so it's an old picture. It's hard to see clearly, but hopefully you can see, sort of as Douglass described for New Bedford, the women are dressed in beautiful dresses, the men are in their hats, and suits, and ties. 

So again, it's really, the Juneteenth celebration in Houston then becomes this opportunity to celebrate beauty and sophistication and to celebrate Black freedom and the potential of Black people to enjoy the rights of citizenship. 

Other examples, this is another example of two sisters from Houston from 1908, Martha and Pinkie Yates. And you can see that their carriage has been decorated, again, as Douglas described from 1855, it's completely adorned with flowers. I mean, so their buggy is now the sort of beautiful chariot for them. They're wearing these very fancy ornate lace dresses and lace hats. And so again, this idea of Juneteenth as a celebration of the vitality of Black culture and Black communities. 

This is another community organization, The Spirit of Charity is what their sign says. It's a Houston arts club, right? So it was an intellectual and social club for Black women in Houston. And here they are on an adored wagon. 

This I like. I wanted to throw in because this is obviously a much more modern picture, but sort of gives you a sense of the enduring tradition of Juneteenth celebrations in Texas. And so back here on this truck, no more flowers, but you can see there's a man in his military uniform with the American flag. 

And that sense of connection to American history and being heirs to those American ideals of freedom and citizenship are also central points of Juneteenth celebrations in the 19th and 20th century, right? That it's about the vitality and strength of Black communities, but of Black communities as part of the American fabric. So again, that idea of citizenship and inclusion. 

And you can see early examples of this. This is a picture from 1900 in Austin, Texas. An Austin, Texas Black community has a similar story of the formerly enslaved residents in Austin pool their money to buy land to create a park where Black people can gather. 

And this is a Juneteenth celebration, and so here are the members of the band that would have performed for entertainment. But you can see very clearly that they've posed themselves in front of an American flag. And so the sentiment very much is Juneteenth as a celebration of Black Americans' Americanness as free people. This is one of my favorite pictures from Austin. It's a collection, a group of formerly enslaved, very elderly people, but so dignified, with posture that we should all be emulating. And again, just dressed to the nines. 

Boston too was home to many emancipation celebrations, both some of those that I mentioned before the Civil War, but then after the Civil War. So this is a drawing of the Charles Street, where the African Methodist Episcopal Church was housed from 1876 to 1916 before it moved. And the congregation in the church and the local community there held emancipation celebrations routinely, again, celebrating both the work of abolitionists and bringing about the end of slavery. 

At the AME Church in particular, at their celebrations, they often pay tribute to people like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, that community of Black and white abolitionists that worked in New England. And, of course, they paid special tribute to the men who served in the 橙子影院 54th and 55th regiments during the war. 

And so again, this idea was really anchored in both Black and white antislavery communities before the war and it endured after the war. And one of the things that the historian in me feels like is important to emphasize is a lot of these Emancipation Day celebrations took place on different dates, right? 

Juneteenth emerges over time as the central holiday, but there were many emancipation celebrations. Some were on January 1 to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. Some were in April to commemorate both the end of slavery in Washington, DC, in the nation's capital, and also to commemorate General Lee's surrender of the Confederacy in April. 

So the days varied and some continued the August celebrations of British emancipation. So the days sometimes varied on the calendar, but what was clear and consistent was, again, this articulation of what Douglass described, I think, so beautifully, right? 

That the processions and parades of young men and young women, of older men and older women, were really meant to celebrate Black people's place in America. And so they were very forward looking, right? On the one hand, they were memorializing the lives and experiences of enslaved people. And at the same time, they were forward looking towards a future in which Black people would enjoy the full rights of freedom and citizenship in the United States. 

These are just a couple more. So to give you a sense of the geographic scope, this is from Florida from the early 1900s. Again, you can see it's a school, the St. Benedict Parochial School, and they've decorated their truck. Here, I like this one. This is from Missouri. So again, the geographic scope. We can see Juneteenth and emancipation celebrations from Boston to Florida. I've read about some in Miami and Palm Beach, Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, Wichita, Kansas. 

This is from Missouri. And, of course, again, what to notice, the horse, in which case this young man is leading-- I don't know if it's his wife or his girlfriend on a horse for the parade, and the horse is decorated, right? They've draped an American flag over the horse. So again, very much a sense of connection to an American place for African-Americans in the American body politic. 

This is another one of my favorites because I think it's really symbolic. This is 1905, Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. 1905 is also that period of time in the United States that's the height of lynching, right? The height of that Klan activity, of the murder of mainly Black men and boys, also some women, of a real campaign of terror that was meant truly to terrorize African-Americans away from engaging in politics, away from economic autonomy, and to really maintain a hierarchy that kept African-Americans subordinate to white Americans both in social custom, but also in law. 

And so-- but here's an Emancipation Day celebration in which hundreds, if not thousands, of the Black community from Richmond and the surrounding area has their parade, right? So this is the tail end of the parade. There would have been veterans at the front, and then a band, and then the citizens and the participants bringing up the rear. 

So hundreds if not thousands of Black people celebrating Black freedom and citizenship in the heart of the Confederacy, the former heart of the Confederacy. And how striking that must have been. And then, of course, unintentionally for the parade goers, but perhaps intentionally for the photographer, is again the American flag flying over this. 

And so I think that the images-- like, I hope that when you look at them, you can see and imagine the significance for this group of people that surely included people who were born into slavery, who lived through the Civil War, and then all of these little people in the foreground, all of these children that are probably the second generation, maybe the third generation of people who were born free. 

And how powerful that must have been for them and their families, right? How powerful for their parents and grandparents to dress up their children for a day to celebrate Black freedom in America for people who had lived through slavery and who were only less than half a century away from it, so within so many people's lifetime and living memory to be able to claim public space to celebrate Black citizenship and Black freedom. 

And so I think these images give us that opportunity to think about the symbolism of Juneteenth, both the history, that long history of that march towards freedom and citizenship, but also how symbolically powerful it was and what it must have meant to people to be able to be in public space and to claim their right to occupy public space as citizens and free people. 

And so I think when we think about Juneteenth, that that's really where the power and potential of the holiday lies, right? And President Meehan, I was thinking about your remarks at the beginning about the work that UMass is doing both on the individual campuses, and out of your office, and in conjunction with other partners in the state, and the note I made to myself was, Juneteenth also gives us an opportunity to think about how we can continue to advance these ideals of inclusion, of equality, of diversity, not only in our university, but also in our own communities. 

And so on I think Juneteenth gives us a really important symbolic moment to stop and realize that these things are a process, and they unfold over time, and they unfold with intentional and deliberate commitment and energy. And so that's where I would leave you and I will thank you for your time.