Saturday was a great day for DeKalb, and for Bowie County, as hundreds showed up to celebrate Juneteenth.
The parade was one of the longest I have ever seen around here. Cars, trucks, floats, horses and a lot of happy folks lined up to celebrate the day and spread a little sunshine. After the parade those same crowds went down to the park to enjoy some good ol’ home cookin’ and some great fellowship.
The parade, and the ensuing revelry was to mark one the brightest days in Texas, and United States history, as Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19 of that year that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed on the Texas Gulf coast at Galveston and announced that the war had ended and that the slavery had ended.
Granger read that day, “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.”
More than 150 years after that great day, we celebrate that announcement, all the while recognizing that we as Americans still have a long way to go as far as become equal and united.
Yes, we somehow find ways to put aside our differences when tragedy strikes. I remember fondly the days after 9/11, not to recognize the horrible travesty that was handed to us all that day, but the way we all became one.
For just a little while.
Those were days that were at the same time some of our worst, and some of our best as a country. Back in the days after the Twin Towers fell it was so much harder to see our differences. Neighbors became brothers, strangers became friends, and we all became proud to be an American. We were truly a “United” States.
Then, we forgot.
