Fired Up for a Cherished ‘Jubilee’ : Leaders Hope Upcoming Juneteenth Celebration in Santa Ana Will Unify Scattered Black Community

When black Texans began their migration to other states after the Civil War, California--with its ripe mining and agricultural markets--looked like a golden opportunity.

Poor and often ragged, these newly freed slaves came only with their strong work ethics and an equally strong sense of freedom.

On June 22 in Santa Ana, many of their descendants will celebrate the event that was responsible for them leaving the South in the first place: the end of slavery.

Juneteenth, or “the Jubilee,” as the celebration is also called, is an annual holiday whose seeds were planted in Galveston, Tex. It was there that Union Gen. Gordon Granger announced on June 19, 1865, that slaves in that state were free.

In Orange County, where blacks comprise only 2% of the population, sponsors of the Juneteenth celebration hope it will unify the scattered black community.

“In Orange County, we’re so spread out, we need community events,” said Willie Mae Hunt, chairwoman of the event’s planning committee. “Outside of church, I don’t see it (here). We need something to make our presence known.”

Although other groups have staged celebrations in the past, this is the first time the county’s chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People has joined forces with the city of Santa Ana.

County NAACP Vice President Jim Tippins, whose Santa Ana fish market, Tippins’ Seafood Connection, serves as an informal meeting place for blacks, said: “In the past, (the NAACP) has risen to other occasions, like housing. At this time, I feel we have a different problem, not having the cohesiveness of a neighborhood is a problem because you don’t have the extended family, the network.”

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), whose husband is a Houston, Tex., native and who has organized smaller Juneteenth events in Los Angeles in the past, said she commends Santa Ana officials for sponsoring the event.

“In a place like Orange County, where you have blacks who are isolated with no black political representation, the idea of banding together . . . (finding) ways to say, ‘We’re here,’ are reasons for Juneteenth celebrations.”

From somber thanksgiving prayers to drinking and dancing, Juneteenth celebrations across the country usually involve sporting events, red soda water, barbecue and the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

At Prentice Park near the Santa Ana Zoo, celebration sponsors are planning a day of horseshoes, cards and volleyball games, “down-home cooking,” speeches, dance and baking contests, and ethnic clothing and crafts sales. Participants are asked to bring picnic lunches and dinners and to donate $1 per person to help raise money for future events.

Starting the festivities at 10 a.m. will be a speech on the importance of remembering “whence we came” to be given by Ivan McKinney, Santa Ana Unified School District’s director of physical education and athletics and a native of San Angelo, Tex.

There will be reggae music performed by On Root and “hip hop” music played by In Stepp. Miss Black Southern California, Kim Marshall, will also appear.

Pastor John McReynolds of the Second Baptist Church of Santa Ana--one of the county’s largest black congregations--said he is encouraging his members to attend. “I think it’ll be exciting,” he said. “People will be able to find some kind of common ground. (It’s) an opportunity to come together and allow us to get acquainted.”

County NAACP President Jim Colquitt of Placentia said he’s looking forward to celebrating the way he did every June 19 when he was growing up in Temple, Tex. He said the local celebration will help preserve part of black history. “It’s important not to lose your traditions and your culture. . . . Traditionally, black history has been transferred from mouth to ear. We don’t have books.”

From the first freedom celebration in 1865 to the early 1950s, the Juneteenth celebrations were strong among black Texans, even those who had migrated as far north as Washington, D.C. But with the first rumblings of the Civil Rights Movement, blacks began to shy away from celebrating Juneteenth--slave slang for June and 19th--saying it was reminiscent of a time they wanted to forget.

With the landmark school desegregation decision, Brown vs. the Board of Education, and the Montgomery bus boycott, blacks took on different attitudes, said William Wiggins, associate professor of Afro-American Studies at Indiana University.

Instead of clinging to their parochial celebrations, blacks began looking for ways to intergrate with mainstream America.

“We (were trying) to downplay our differences (with whites) and accentuate the common bond. Younger Americans celebrated the Fourth of July because they had fought in the war. But older ones wanted to celebrate June 19,” said Wiggins, whose book, “O Freedom! Emancipation Celebrations,” examines the origins of black holidays.

In Texas, interest waned until 1979 when state legislator Al Edwards, now serving his seventh term, successfully lobbied his political colleagues to have June 19 recognized as a state holiday.

Although he jokes about having watermelon served on the Capitol steps when the bill was signed into law, Edwards is serious about his reasons for pushing to have a state-recognized day for black Texans.

“This was going to be a day to try to pull ourselves our to the hole we’re in,” said Edwards. “We’re the majority in prison, we’re at the bottom educationally, lowest on the totem pole economically. Where do you start if you don’t start with something of our own? This is surely our own.”

To reach his goals, in 1979 Edwards also founded a nonprofit organization, Juneteenth U.S.A., to work year-round enhancing, promoting and preserving the meaning of Juneteenth through youth programs and Black History Month activities.

“We needed to develop a vehicle to get to the minds of our young black boys and girls saying, ‘You can achieve. You can be responsible. It doesn’t matter what part of the ghetto you come from,’ ” Edwards said.

In the decade since Juneteenth became a Texas state holiday, the tradition has remained strong . . . and growing.

At the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., employees are planning their second Juneteenth celebration. They will serve barbecue, red soda and watermelon and have readings from Frederick Douglass, who asked in 1852, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”

In Chicago, the Historical Society is planning its second celebration, highlighting the more somber aspects of the emancipation day with speeches made by Douglass and free black woman Charlotte Forten.

Across California, where many black former Texans now hold public office, including Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, politicians and civil rights organizations will be commemorating the day with celebrations big and small.

The NAACP’s Tippins sees the Juneteenth celebration as a way to reflect not only the gains that blacks have seen in the last 125 years, but the losses as well.

“Juneteenth was a day of liberation, a day that the shackles were taken off and the black man was supposedly given the freedom to go as high as he wanted to. However, black people have (become) somewhat complacent and now have realized we are not free,” Tippins said.

He said Juneteenth, in some ways, is a good reason to come together. “We want to make it a traditional holiday to reinforce that we’ve come a long way and we can still go farther.”