OXNARD : Black Community Holds Its ‘Fourth’

Their memories conjured up larger festivals in Southern towns and Northern cities: parades in Birmingham, Ala., three-day jubilees in Mexia and Fort Worth, Texas, block parties in Milwaukee.

But Saturday in Oxnard’s Community Center Park, black residents grilled ribs, churned ice cream and unwrapped deviled eggs in a smaller celebration of “Juneteenth”--a holiday marking the end of slavery in the Deep South.

“It’s our Fourth of July,” said Tempest Holloway, who was selling hotdogs to raise money for the Bethel African Episcopal Church.

In its second year, the picnic, sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee of Ventura County, brought out a few church groups and political organizations for barbecued ribs and picnic-basket lunches.

On June 19, 1865, Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to force owners to free their slaves, six months after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Today, many black families observe Juneteenth as a homecoming, returning there for church services and celebrations, usually on the weekend preceding the 19th.

Bedford Pinkard, who founded and heads the King committee, said that next year that former Oxnard residents would be invited to the celebration.

When Pinkard was growing up in Mexia, “black folks would work on the Fourth of July and take the 19th off,” he said. Today, he and others said with regret, young people know little about the celebration because it is not stressed in the schools or in many homes.