What is JuneteenthVA?
Juneteenth is the oldest national commemoration that focuses on the end of slavery in the USA.
On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Within days, federal troops traveled on horseback across the country spreading the news that slavery was abolished. As the troops crossed the country and announced the news, celebrations called Liberty, Victory, Independence, and Emancipation Days became annual events (some still in existence) in those localities on the date of receiving the news.
On June 19, 1865, Gen. Gordon Granger announced the abolition of slavery in Galveston, making Texas the last state to receive the news. Because of the date, that celebration was named "Juneteenth” – what many think of as African American Emancipation Day. The spirit of the Juneteenth holiday expanded further on June 14, 1866, when the signing of five Indian treaties with the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Choctaw in Oklahoma was met with a similar sense of the celebration of freedom and peace. Now Juneteenth honors the story of African descent and all people of color in the United States.
Over the years, many people have petitioned for Juneteenth to be made both a national and state holiday, so that the events it celebrates can be given the same recognition as other American History holidays – studied by school children and celebrated nationwide. But it was more than 100 years after the news was first spread that Juneteenth was finally designated an official state holiday – in Texas in 1980. Forty years later – on Friday, June 19, 2020 – Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a law to recognize Juneteenth as a paid state holiday. And, finally, in 2021, Juneteenth became an official Federal Holiday.
JuneteenthVA’s Festival Beginnings
When we hosted the first Hampton Roads Juneteenth Festival at Tidewater Community College-Portsmouth campus in 1997, there were a lot of questions that started with, "June-who?" or "June-what?" By 2020, very few people didn’t know about the Juneteenth holiday. For years, JuneteenthVA and Juneteenth groups and organizations based in the other 49 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam have been honoring, celebrating, and recognizing the holiday with a range of programs and activities that focus on highlighting the "TRUE" history of African descent people and all persons of color in the United States of America.
Here in our region, we use theatre arts to educate the public about the true history of slavery. Slavery was a founding block of the Jamestown Colony. The United States of America grew into the world's most powerful nation built by the stolen labor of an enslaved people. Those very people – shedding blood, sweat, and tears under the weight of their forced labor – nonetheless fought and resisted with ingenuity, faith, and courage. Sharing that important American history to heal the nation of slavery’s legacy without shame or blame is our job.
Tidewater History -- The American Dream Retold
Our Tidewater-Hampton Roads local history tells the story of how a small group of Angolan men and women were brought ashore the "latter part of August 1619" at the location where Fort Monroe is today.
About 250 years later, that fort became the location of the Contraband Escape: In May 1861 three enslaved men: James Townsend, Frank Baker, and Sheppard Mallory escaped via rowboat from their owners in Norfolk. They rowed across the river to the Union camp at Fort Monroe, found the person in charge (Federal General Benjamin Butler) and demanded their freedom. When their owner came to collect his "property," he was denied their return under a federal policy known as "contraband of war." The three men were put on the federal payroll and the path to American citizenship, which was later completed with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution by 1870. This bold move, made at the beginning of the Civil War and two years before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, made Townsend, Baker, and Mallory the first enslaved people to experience freedom.
This is the moment when the American Dream was first dreamed. Once word spread about what these three brave men had done, within weeks, thousands of enslaved men, women, and children started making their way to Fort Monroe and other federal camps situated across the South. These federal "safe camps" were the 19th century's version of Ellis Island as America sought to provide all of her tired and poor citizens with equal protection under the law.
Why JuneteenthVA
Tidewater-Hampton Roads is where the United States of America was born and holds many seminal moments of its complex history. It is where the first enslaved Africans were sold at Point Comfort and where the first enslaved Africans found freedom at the same location. Virginia is where the institution of slavery was built into the Virginia Codes one law at a time. Eight of the first 15 presidents were from Virginia – and the majority were slave holders. The 1831 Nat Turner Insurrection –which took place in Southampton Virginia – is recognized by many as the first battle of the Civil War. And just over 20 years later, Dred Scott – who was born an enslaved African American in Southampton County -- sued for his family’s freedom: he lost his case in the Supreme Court, resulting in a ruling that further cemented slavery's choke hold on Black lives. Richmond, Virginia was the capitol of the Confederacy, and because of its many waterways and the proximity of the Great Dismal Swamp, Tidewater-Hampton Roads was a major stop on the Underground Railroad. All these defining moments took place in one state: Virginia.
Because of this local history, JuneteenthVA is most qualified to successfully complete our mission: to heal America from the wounds of slavery without shame or blame. JuneteenthVA is a collective of artists, social justice activists, essential workers, faith communities, and ordinary folks of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. On a weekly Saturday call hosted by the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF) with representatives of Juneteenth groups from around the country, we frequently affirm an idea or suggestion with the phrase, "All things Juneteenth!" So, please repeat .... "All things JuneteenthVA!"
Thriving and Surviving Through the Arts
The significance of the first Africans to land at what would become known as "Freedom Fortress Monroe" 242 years later cannot be overstated. Those first African Americans, like many of their European peers, went to work as indentured servants in the Jamestown Colony. Indentured servants worked contracts averaging 7 to 14 years. Once a contract was completed, a person was "middle-class." At least, that is the way it typically happened for European Americans.
Unfortunately, the door of optimism first opened by the Contraband Emancipation and later evidenced by post-Civil War events was short-lived on many fronts as anti-freedom forces found ways to maintain their power and control. While there were a few small African American communities that thrived, for most, African Americans Reconstruction existed in name only and even that ruse was over by 1876. The KKK, Jim Crow and Manifest Destiny took over the American Dream from all who were not white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant -- WASP. In 1776 this all male demographic ruled the New World with violence in pursuit of material goods.
African and Native Americans experienced many generations of enslavement and oppression following their supposed freedom. Yet you will not find these stories in traditional history books. These stories were shared in the wails of songs, the leaping and moving of dances, and the beating of drums telling stories of escapes to freedom. The American narrative has left out the power of creativity to both communicate the suffering of difficult lives and to express joy in the midst of oppression. Strength was built in areas where a powerless people could exert some control -- their food, their language, their dance, their storytelling, and their spirituality. Rooting JuneteenthVA programming firmly in the theater and adjacent arts is a profound, collective existential continuation of this tradition. In these perilous times, we must ask the question, “how do an oppressed people survive?” Surely fate and God play a role in this narrative, along with the consistent enrichment of a people’s culture in which traditions survive and thrive.
Facing America’s History today
Unpacking the difficult, painful history of slavery without shame or blame is where JuneteenthVA steps in to facilitate healing. We acknowledge the hard truth that the acceptance of slavery is inherent in the Constitution. The founding fathers could have used the Constitution to eliminate slavery, but they did not. Furthermore, that most sacred document went on to use all “non-free” people – an obvious reference to enslaved people, who were almost exclusively of African descent – to increase the political power of slave-holding Southern states: Although far from represented in our country’s nascent government, enslaved persons were nonetheless counted to increase Southern States’ Congressional representation and the power of those states to build and run the new nation. The supposed “price" the southern states were meant to pay for the advantage of counting enslaved people towards congressional representation was a direct tax calculated based on head count. But the tax was rarely if ever charged because it in fact had to be approved by the congress – weighted towards southern states because of counting the enslaved. Thus, the compounding injustices done to enslaved men, women, and children cannot be overstated: they were used not only to build wealth and capital for their white owners, but to build those owners’ political power.
This story of how the enslaved were accounted for in the Constitution is just a small part of a long history of abuse and injustice codified into law throughout the country. It is in response to this history that JuneteenthVA exists. We are powered by a host of individuals and institutions with a mission that focuses on a number of different fronts including health care, incarceration rates, immigration, poverty and education.
JuneteenthVA uses the shared experience of the arts to support truthful acknowledgement of our inclusive American history that shaped and continues to influence the very essence of our lives in these extreme and existential times. Through theater and other arts, community members become sensitized to the conditions and experiences of others -- only then, without shame or blame, can we make significant and lasting improvements in the work of dismantling slavery's infrastructure.