Freedom Pondered, Celebrated at Juneteenth Fest

Every June for the last decade, Ora Lincoln has come to Community Center Park West on Hobson Way in Oxnard, sat down with some barbecue and reflected on the day plantation slaves in Texas were set free.

It happened June 15, 1865. Saturday, Lincoln and others remembered the plight of the Galveston, Texas, slaves at a Juneteenth festival at the park.

“We need to keep our minds focused on where we really came from,” Lincoln said as she sat on a picnic bench at the park. “Kids today, they think everything is a flowery bed of ease. I was the oldest of 11 children and we really had to work.”

The event was hosted by the Ventura County chapter of the Black American Political Assn. of California.

The daylong festival included gospel music, games, food and arts and crafts booths.

Organizer Bobbie Blair said this year’s festival almost didn’t happen because of lack of sponsorship.

At the last minute “we decided we wanted to keep it alive. It’s something the community enjoys,” Blair said. Juneteenth commemorates the day that the slaves in Galveston learned they had been set free more than two years earlier. Union soldiers led by Maj. Gordon Granger brought them the news that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect Jan. 1, 1863.

Aletha Dodson-Watson, 36, said Juneteenth and its history--Texas slaves working on plantations unaware they were free to go--made her think about the value of knowledge.

As she pushed her 3-year-old daughter, Aleece, on a swing in the park, the Ventura resident said she will make Juneteenth celebrations a tradition in her family.

“We take so many things for granted that it’s good to be reminded of times when you couldn’t just go where you wanted to go,” she said.

Juneteenth is a welcome tradition in Ventura County, where only 2% of residents are black, said Constance Rutledge, 41, of Ventura.

“With such a small population, it’s hard to find our culture,” said Rutledge, standing with her daughter, Raven, 8, and husband, Donnie.

“This is a chance to expose our child to it and to be supportive of this day.”