People will celebrate Juneteenth in North Omaha on Saturday with a parade and two festivals that include live music, family fun and games, guided bicycle rides, oratory, poetry and, of course, food.
The Omaha NAACP’s annual Juneteenth Parade, back after a two-year pandemic-related hiatus, is scheduled for 10 a.m. on North 24th Street, the historic and revitalizing heart of Omaha’s Black community.
Two daylong festivals will take place after the parade: the Omaha Freedom Festival, on the grounds of the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation at 34th and Evans Streets, and Juneteenth Joy Fest, north of 24th and Lake Streets.
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. It takes its name from the day, June 19, 1865, when a Union Army general announced in Galveston, Texas, that the Civil War had ended and that President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Long celebrated in Black communities across the nation, Juneteenth has had more widespread attention in recent years, especially since the summer of 2020’s racial unrest and protests. Congress passed legislation, signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. It also became an official Nebraska state holiday this year — Juneteenth National Independence Day — under a bill introduced by State Sen. Justin Wayne, passed 48-0 by the Nebraska Legislature and signed by Gov. Pete Ricketts.
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Juneteenth historically marked “a major, positive juncture in a time that was about as bad as possible in our nation’s development — slavery,” said Preston Love Jr., a community organizer and adjunct professor in the Black Studies Department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Juneteenth also is a time for celebration of Black culture and heritage as well as freedom, Love said.
The parade in North Omaha has historically been the main formally organized local event. It will start at 24th and Lake Streets and travel north on 24th to Sprague Street.
The theme of the parade is “Legends and Legacies,” and several pioneering African American principals from Omaha Public Schools will ride the route in Ollie the Trolley. Several drill teams and dance teams will perform in the parade. The UNO Black Studies Department, led by Professor Cynthia Robinson and celebrating its 50th anniversary, will participate. So will health care organizations, a Baptist pastors group and Black-owned businesses.
Parade judges will be majorettes and a drummer from back-in-the-day drill teams the Elks and the Contemporaries.
Parade chair Frankie J. Williams estimated that more than 600 people will be in the parade.
After the parade, the Omaha Freedom Festival is scheduled for noon to midnight in the outside event center at Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, 3448 Evans St. That includes a free family festival from noon to 5 p.m. A concert that includes national recording artists Raheem DeVaughn, Tink, Changing Faces and Kut Klose, as well as local musicians, will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are required for the concert and can be purchased at omahafreedomfestival.com. Tickets will not be sold at the festival.
Freedom Festival aims to create an all-ages cultural event, providing an interactive educational opportunity focused on Juneteenth, said Calvin Williams, operations manager for Freedomtainment, the nonprofit putting on the event. He said it also aims to connect people from the community with multiple resources.
Everything at the family festival from noon to 5 will be free, including such food as burgers, hot dogs and grilled chicken. The festival will offer arts and crafts, face painting and other activities for children. Ten bikes will be given away every hour, through a partnership with Union Pacific Railroad and the Omaha Black Police Officers Association. Health and wellness checks, screenings for diabetes and other conditions and COVID vaccinations will be offered. Exhibitors will offer resources to college and financial literacy programs. There will be a reading, by Robinson, of the Emancipation Proclamation, along with other educational presentations.
The Freedom Festival, in the works for a couple of years, started with the idea that people needed more ways to celebrate cultural heritage in North Omaha, Calvin Williams said.
Juneteenth Joy Fest is scheduled for noon to 11 p.m., centered on a mobile stage behind Fabric Lab, 2514 N. 24th St.
It is a Black arts and culture festival created to just support Black artists and Black entrepreneurs, said artist and event organizer Alajia McKizia. McKizia launched the event in an empty lot near her home last year and is organizing it this year.
“We just wanted to give folks a space to celebrate Black culture and Juneteenth, as it becomes a federal holiday and more widespread, we wanted to make sure that it still recognizes our culture,” she said.
Admission is free to the event, but donations will be accepted. Joy Fest will include performances from many local musical artists and poets, as well as rapper LaRussell from Vallejo, California.
Joy Fest’s main sponsors include The Union for Contemporary Art, Fabric Lab, the Weitz Family Foundation and Millwork Commons.
Joy Fest’s Black flea market is scheduled for noon to 3 p.m. Poetry and music will follow from about 4:30 to 11 p.m. Food will be sold by Black-owned Nebraska small businesses Soul Brothers Inc., Haven Express and Juju’s Vegan.
Joy Fest events also include a bike ride guided by the North Omaha Trail Project’s leader, Manne Cook. It’s scheduled to start about 11 a.m. Saturday from Fabric Lab and will include a tour of the completed portion of the North Omaha Trail, neighborhoods and probably a loop through the College World Series neighborhood.
Culxr House, an arts, community and entrepreneurial hub at 3014 N. 24th Street, plans its third annual North Omaha and downtown bike ride for 4 p.m. Saturday. Culxr House will also present a live reenactment by the Descendants of DeWitty, Nebraska, the state’s largest and longest-lasting African American settlement, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
The history and significance of Juneteenth
The history and significance of Juneteenth
Juneteenth—also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, or the country’s second Independence Day—stands as an enduring symbol of Black American freedom.
When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and fellow federal soldiers arrived in Galveston, a coastal town on Texas’ Galveston Island, on June 19, 1865, it was to issue orders for the emancipation of enslaved people throughout the state.
Although telegraph messages had shared news of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and while the war had been settled in the Union’s favor since April of 1865, Granger’s message was a promise of accountability. There was now a large enough coalition to enforce the end of slavery and overwhelm the Texas Conferedate constitution, which forbade individuals’ release from bondage.
In that way, Texas became the last Confederate state to end slavery in the U.S.
Though celebrated for hundreds of years in parts of the U.S., Juneteenth’s history and significance only recently scaled for a massive national audience and inflection point. The historic date was not recognized as a federal holiday until 2021—more than a century and a half after it took place.
Stacker explored the history and significance of Juneteenth by examining historical documentation including texts for General Order #3 and the Emancipation Proclamation. Stacker also researched the lasting significance of this historic day while clearing up some of the most egregious misinformation about it.
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Juneteenth commemorates the 1865 delivery of General Order #3
Maj. Gen. Granger was given command of the District of Texas following the Civil War’s conclusion, making him an obvious choice for delivering General Order #3.
In its simplest terms, General Order #3 declared that all enslaved people in Texas were free; but the order maintained racist undertones and encouraged enslaved people to stay where they were being held to continue work—this time for wages as free men and women.
The order’s handwritten record, preserved at the National Archives Building in Washington D.C., reads:
“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 personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
Chattel slavery in all states wasn’t abolished until the end of 1865
The Emancipation Proclamation, signed into law by President Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, called for an end to legal slavery in secessionist Confederate states only, impacting about 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country at that time. As the war drew to a close and Union soldiers retook territory, enslaved people living in those areas were liberated.
Lincoln’s decision to free only those enslaved individuals in bondage in Confederate states was a strategic, militaristic method, as he notably did not free those enslaved in Union states. Further, the proclamation was unenforceable. Still, Union troops fighting in the war brought news of emancipation along with the military might to enforce it. Many enslaved people were motivated enough by the news to risk fleeing and seek safety in Union states or by joining the U.S. Army and Navy to help fight.
Following the Emancipation Proclamation, any enslaved person who escaped over Union lines or to oncoming federal troops during the war was free in perpetuity.
Maj. Gen. Granger’s orders on June 19, 1865, released enslaved people in Texas from bondage. But it was another six months before the last two states—Delaware and Kentucky—freed enslaved people, and only then when the 13th Amendment was ratified on Dec. 18, 1865.
The 13th Amendment officially ended slavery and involuntary servitude at the federal level, except as a punishment for a crime. That loophole has been capitalized upon since the amendment passed. Kentucky officially adopted the 13th Amendment in 1976.
Juneteenth celebrations originated in Galveston, Texas, starting in 1866
Mixed reactions followed Granger’s proclamation.
Many newly freed people remained on former enslavers’ properties to work for pay, while others immediately fled north or into nearby states like Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma to reunite with family. As people fanned out around the country, they took Juneteenth celebrations along with them. Formerly enslaved people and their descendants also made yearly pilgrimages back to Galveston to memorialize the date’s significance.
Juneteenth became an official Texas holiday in 1980.
While Juneteenth is among the oldest celebrations of emancipation, it is not the oldest. That distinction goes to Gallipolis, Ohio, which has celebrated the end of slavery there since Sept. 22, 1863.
The first land to commemorate and celebrate the event was purchased in 1872 and is now a public park
Formerly enslaved African American ministers and businessmen got together in 1872 to raise the $1,000 necessary to buy 10 acres of land in Houston’s Third and Fourth wards. They called the lot Emancipation Park.
The park was donated to the city of Houston in 1916. In the late 1930s, the Public Works Administration, which was established as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, constructed a recreation center and public pool on the park site. The Houston City Council declared the park a protected historic landmark on Nov. 7, 2007.
South Dakota was the last state to make Juneteenth a legal holiday
In February 2022, Gov. Kristi Noem signed HB 1025 to recognize Juneteenth as a legal holiday.
Hawaii and North Dakota preceded South Dakota by about eight and 10 months, respectively.
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Juneteenth has been celebrated in Mexico for more than 150 years
Mexico was a longtime sanctuary for those who escaped chattel slavery, with a Southern Underground Railroad that helped as many as 10,000 people flee bondage. Descendants of enslaved people who also emigrated over the southern border from the U.S. brought with them a tapestry of histories and traditions, including the Juneteenth celebration.
Juneteenth has been celebrated in a small Mexican village called Nacimiento since 1870.
The last enslaved people in the US weren’t adopted as citizens until 1885
The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and had members who enslaved Black women, children, and men. Following the Civil War’s conclusion, the Choctaws did not grant those who were enslaved their freedom.
The Treaty of 1866 called for the Choctaws to free the enslaved Africans in exchange for $300,000 paid by the U.S. government to the Choctaws and Choctaw Nation. Many of those liberated chose to stay and live as free people among the tribal communities. More than 100 years later, in 1983, Choctaw voters adopted a tribal constitution that declared all members “shall consist of all Choctaw Indians by blood whose names appear on the original rolls of the Choctaw Nation … and their lineal descendants,” all but expelling Freedmen citizens from citizenship within the tribal community.
Festivities became more commercialized in the 1920s during the Great Migration
Early Juneteenth celebrations were spent in prayer and with family but eventually expanded to include everything from rodeos and baseball to certain foods like strawberry soda pop and barbecues. Food has long been central to Juneteenth, as participants often all arrive with their own dishes.
Attention for Juneteenth waned in the early 20th century as classroom instruction veered away from the history of enslavement in the U.S. and instead taught that slavery ended in one fell swoop with the Emancipation Proclamation.
Juneteenth officially became a Texas state holiday in 1980
Texas was the last Confederate state to free enslaved people from bondage, but it was also the first to make Juneteenth an official state holiday.
The late Texas Rep. Al Edwards put forth a bill in 1979 called HB 1016 that was entered into state law later that year and went into effect on Jan. 1, 1980. It was more than a decade before another state—Florida—passed a similar law of recognition.
Juneteenth recognized as a federal holiday in 2021
Juneteenth achieved increasing recognition in recent decades, but the full embrace of the celebration as a national holiday gained momentum around the nation following the murder of George Floyd on May 20, 2020. The resultant Black Lives Matter protests that erupted worldwide in a stance against acts of racial injustice and police brutality spurred corporations nationwide to support Juneteenth as an act of allyship—and things snowballed from there.
The following year, President Joe Biden signed a bill in June 2021 officially declaring Juneteenth a national holiday. Juneteenth was the first new federal holiday since 1983 (MLK Jr. Day) after decades of organizing.
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chris.burbach@owh.com, 402-444-1057, twitter.com/CHRISBURBACH
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