Fmr. Councilwoman Crenshaw announces plans for historic 150th Juneteenth Anniversary celebrations in Dallas

“When we talk about black history, no historic event is more debated and celebrated than “Junteenth” proclaims black historian and former Dallas City Councilwoman Sandra Crenshaw.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of June 19th, 1865 when President Abraham Lincoln sent troops to the Texas Gulf Coast City of Galveston to announce the end of the civil war and thus the enforcement of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves in Texas. The event is now a state holiday in Texas as well as several other states in the U.S.

Younger generations have said they do not recognize the celebration because it reveals the ignorance of the slaves in Texas for celebrating the emancipation proclamation two years later. Historians will tell you however; that the very last battle of the civil war was fought near Brownsville, Texas in 1865. The Texas confederacy continued to fight to the bitter end, Texas was not part of the union and the slave owners were not bound by the 1863 proclamation. So in effect, the slaves celebrated the end of the civil war on June 19. The African Americans in Texas knew that it was only when the confederacy troops of Texas were defeated, that the proclamation would become enforceable.

Juneteenth was an occasion that brought unity and community to the lives of the formerly enslaved. Although they were legally freed, the African American continued to be subjected to racism, segregation, and violence. In several areas in Texas, the freedmen were not allowed to celebrate Juneteenth on the plantation, therefore groups of black men and women pooled their money and actually purchased land in Houston, Austin, and Mexia to host their local annual celebrations. Those sites are now City parks.

“What other state’s freedman celebrated the 1863 proclamation and which state had descendants of their enslaved demand that the historic event become a state holiday, other than Texas African Americans,” Crenshaw asks. “Our younger folks need not hold their head in shame and avoid eating watermelon and drinking red soda water. Don’t let others define your history, your legacy, and your culture.” she says.

The Dallas Historical Parks Project recognizes that the celebrations in parks also “reflects on the many complex ways that Black citizens responded to social inequity and how they created community to thrive in despite oppressive realities.” This project is funded by the Boone Family Foundation to gather, preserve and present documentation aimed at contributing to discussions on how to resolve the lingering racial problems we face in America today.

This year, Crenshaw has urged several historical, cultural, religious, and business organizations to co-host several events to commemorate not only Juneteenth but the 100th Anniversary of two historic parks in Dallas.

In 1915, the city bought three acres near Hall Street in what is now known as Uptown and near the Houston and Texas Central Railway tracks for its first parks for black residents. Nine years later, the Hall Street Negro Park was renamed for the Rev. Allen R. Griggs, a leading black educator, minister and caregiver until his death in 1922.

The park was a social center for the city’s black residents, with its swimming pool and bathhouse, movies and concerts, carnivals and plays. The Old Oak Cliff Negro Park near Golden Gate Baptist Church, also developed in 1915, was renamed Eloise Lundy after one of the first managers in the City of Dallas Park and Recreation Department.