Library of Congress Photo Gallery - Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
William Colbert, Age 93. Between 1936 and 1938. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/mesnp010081/>.
House, Bracketville Seminole-Negro Settlement. July 8. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/99615409/>.
Seminole-Negro Baptist church, Brackettville. July 8. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/99615411/>.
Sarah Gudger, Age 121. Between 1936 and 1938. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/mesnp111350/>.
House and steamboat at West Point, Arkansas. [Between 1937 and] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/99615413/>.
More Juneteenth Information
- Black Voices: Despite increasing debate over critical race theory, Juneteenth became a federal holiday Indiana Daily Student Article by Donyá Collins
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938 This searchable Web-based resource contains over two thousand digitized first-person ac- counts of formerly enslaved Americans. Several accounts relate stories of freedom celebrations. Felix Haywood's interview is in Texas Narratives, vol. 16, part 2, of the Works Progress Administration Slave Narratives.
- Juneteenth: Our Other Independence Day Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, American slavery came to an end and a celebration of freedom was born
- PBS - What is Juneteenth? A PBS article which quotes Dr. William H. Wiggins and reviews the history of Juneteenth
- Why Juneteenth Celebrates the New Birth of Freedom A 2009 interview on Juneteenth with Dr. William H. Wiggins
- Blanck, Emily. “Galveston on San Francisco Bay: Juneteenth in the Fillmore District, 1945-2016.” WESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, vol. 50, no. 2, June 2019, pp. 85–112. This article explores the history of Juneteenth, the commemoration of the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas in San Francisco, California. In 1945, Wesley Johnson, a Texan migrant, introduced Juneteenth to San Francisco's Black community. The celebration sustained itself over seventy years, making it the longest continuous urban celebration of Juneteenth. Juneteenth remained relevant in San Francisco because it became intertwined with the history of African Americans in the Western Addition neighborhood. Most significantly, the holiday was a key expression of resilience as the city demolished the neighborhood in the 1960s, expelling much of the Black community. Surprisingly, later in the 1980s, the holiday became a key point of contact between the city and the Black community. This unlikely holiday continues in San Francisco to the present day.
- Abernethy, Francis Edward, ed. Juneteenth Texas: Essays In African-american Folklore. Denton, Tex.: University of North Texas Press, 1996. Juneteenth Texas explores African-American folkways and traditions from both African-American and white perspectives. Included are descriptions and classifications of different aspects of African-American folk culture in Texas; explorations of songs and stories and specific performers such as Lightnin’ Hopkins, Manse Lipscomb, and Bongo Joe; and a section giving resources for the further study of African-Americans in Texas.
- Adkins, Courtney. “Juneteenth in Louisiana: ‘If I Found out It Was a Holiday, I’d Try to Celebrate It.’” Southern Folklore, vol. 56, no. 3, Jan. 1999, pp. 195–207. The writer discusses the Juneteenth holiday celebrated by African-Americans in Louisiana. She explains that this holiday, which is usually celebrated on June 19, celebrates the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas finally discovered their emancipation, more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. She investigates contemporary celebrations of the holiday, focusing mainly on north Louisiana. She finds that no final and absolute word can be written about the holiday in general, the attitude held by those African-Americans who are aware of it, or the dissimilarity in the way it is celebrated. She concludes, however, that her findings suggest that the holiday is nevertheless valued by a growing number of communities and individuals.
- Hume, Janice, and Noah Arceneaux. “Public Memory, Cultural Legacy, and Press Coverage of the Juneteenth Revival.” Journalism History, vol. 34, no. 3, Sept. 2008, p. 155-63. Following the Civil War, African Americans in Texas celebrated their emancipation with an annual holiday known 'Juneteenth,' The celebration migrated to other areas of the country, and over the past several years there has been a concerted effort to establish it as a national holiday. Using the recent revival and diffusion of Juneteenth as its focal point, this article examines local press coverage of the celebration in four states. The coverage illustrates how journalists invoke history to explain current events and also highlights the changing, fluid nature of public memory. In contrast to the view of history as a fixed, stable account of past events, the evidence reveals that the historical record is continually changing based upon contemporary concerns, political motivations, and, in this particular case, the ongoing integration of African Americans into American society.
- Whitehead, Karsonya Wise. “Reframing the Historical Narrative: Using the Lens of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to Examine the Civil Rights Movement.” Black History Bulletin, vol. 76, no. 2, 2013, pp. 31–33. The article discusses the historical narrative for the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Topics include the United States Supreme Court case Brown v. Board from 1954, the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama in 1955, and comments from Governor of Alabama George Wallace from 1963 concerning segregation. The author focuses on articles and lesson plans within the issue on topics including nonviolent resistance, Juneteenth, or the Emancipation Day, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Defining Moments by
The historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction has earned increasing attention from scholars. Only recently, however, have historians begun to explore African American efforts to interpret those events. With Defining Moments, Kathleen Clark shines new light on African American commemorative traditions in the South, where events such as Emancipation Day and Fourth of July ceremonies served as opportunities for African Americans to assert their own understandings of slavery, the Civil War, and Emancipation--efforts that were vital to the struggles to define, assert, and defend African American freedom and citizenship. Focusing on urban celebrations that drew crowds from surrounding rural areas, Clark finds that commemorations served as critical forums for African Americans to define themselves collectively. As they struggled to assert their freedom and citizenship, African Americans wrestled with issues such as the content and meaning of black history, class-inflected ideas of respectability and progress, and gendered notions of citizenship. Clark's examination of the people and events that shaped complex struggles over public self-representation in African American communities brings new understanding of southern black political culture in the decades following Emancipation and provides a more complete picture of historical memory in the South.
ISBN: 0807829579Publication Date: 2005-09-05
Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present by
Focusing on the making of African American society from the 1896 "separate but equal" ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson up to the contemporary period, this encyclopedia traces the transition from the Reconstruction Era to the age of Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Migration, the Brownruling that overturned Plessy, the Civil Rights Movement, and the ascendant influence of African American culture on the American cultural landscape.Covering African American history in all areas of U.S. history and culture from 1896 to the present, the Encyclopedia contains approximately 1,200 fully cross-referenced entries that are all signed by leading scholars and experts, making this five-volume set the most reliable and extensive treatmentto be found on African American history in the twentieth century. The set also contains 500 images and roughly 640 biographies, as well as an entry on each of the fifty states. In addition to its comprehensive coverage of African Americans, the Encyclopedia also contains entries about key figureswho affected the lives of African Americans in particular and Americans in general. Unrivalled in breadth and scope, this is the preeminent source of information on this topic and is destined to become a trusted reference source for years to come.
ISBN: 9780195167795Publication Date: 2009-02-02
Festivals of Freedom by
With the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, many African Americans began calling for a day of publick thanksgiving to commemorate this important step toward freedom. During the ensuing century, black leaders built on this foundation and constructed a distinctive and vibrant tradition through their celebrations of the end of slavery in New York State, the British West Indies, and eventually the United States as a whole, In this revealing study, Mitch Kachun explores the multiple functions and contested meanings surrounding African American emancipation celebrations from the abolition of the slave trade to the fiftieth anniversary of U.S. emancipation. Excluded from July Fourth and other American nationalist rituals for most of this period, black activists used these festivals of freedom to encourage community building and race uplift. Kachun demonstrates that, even as these annual rituals helped define African Americans as a people by fostering a sense of shared history, heritage, and identity, they were also sites of ambiguity and conflict. Freedom celebrations served as occasions for debate over black representations in the public sphere, struggles for group lea
ISBN: 1558494073Publication Date: 2003-08-01
Juneteenth by
Shot on the Senate floor by a young Black man, a dying racist senator summons an elderly Black Baptist minister from Oklahoma to his side for a remarkable dialogue that reveals the deeply buried secrets of their shared past and the tragedy that reunites them.
ISBN: 0394464575Publication Date: 1999-05-29
Juneteenth Texas by
Juneteenth Texas, Publications of the Texas Folklore Society #LIV, received a San Antonio Conservation Society award for the preservation of historic buildings, objects and places relating to the history of Texas and its natural beauty and all that is admirably distinctive of our state, and to educate the public with knowledge of our inherited regional values.
ISBN: 1574410180Publication Date: 1996-10-01
