What does Juneteenth celebrate? Meaning and origins, explained
This Thursday marks 160 years since the origin of Juneteenth, which commemorates the day the last group of enslaved people found out they had been freed.
Long a holiday in the Black community and now federally recognized, the celebrations kick off each June 19, allowing people to gather, dance, reenact pivotal moments in history, and more.
Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom and opportunity, said Sam Collins, who is on the trustee board for the Rosenberg Library in Galveston, often called 'Professor Juneteenth.'
'It's not so much about slavery as it is about the freedom from slavery and what it allowed for the former enslaved people to live their lives free, to marry, to learn to read, to educate themselves, to have self agency over their bodies, to keep their families together,' he told USA TODAY on June 10.
Here's what to know about Juneteenth, how it began, and how it's celebrated today.
Juneteenth is a commemoration of the events that took place 160 years ago in Galveston, Texas, about 57 miles southeast of Houston.
Calling it an 'often overlooked event in our nation's history,' the National Museum of African American History said Juneteenth occurred two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in rebellious states.
That day, on June 19, 1865, Union troops freed enslaved African Americans in Galveston Bay and across Texas.
'This is American history, world history, Texas history, and most of all, Galveston history, because Galveston, Texas is the birthplace of Juneteenth,' said Collins, a seventh generation Texan.
Collins said formerly enslaved people celebrated after June 1865, but festivities died off for a while.
In 1879, politician Robert Evans introduced a bill to celebrate Black emancipation, but the bill did not garner enough support during the Jim Crow era, Collins said.
Juneteenth celebrations began to regain popularity again in the 1970s and early 1980s, after another Texas politician, Albert Ely Edwards, pushed for Juneteenth to become a state holiday, Collins said.
'There are many ancestors and elders that kept the oral history going until we made it to 2021 and it became a national holiday,' he said. 'And the truth of the matter (is that) if it wasn't for the murder of George Floyd, Juneteenth would not have become a national holiday in 2021.'
Retired teacher and educator Opal Lee, known as the 'Grandmother of Juneteenth,' started a petition to federally recognize Juneteenth in October 2019. Not many people signed, but immediately following Floyd's murder and the protests that ensued, her petition jumped significantly and garnered over 1.6 million signatures.
In June 2021, then-president Joe Biden declared June 19 a national holiday. Lee was present that day.
Upon hearing the news, Collins said he thought of all those who pushed to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, including Rev. Ronald V. Myers Sr., who founded the National Juneteenth Observers Foundation before his death in 2018.
'I wish they had lived to see it,' he said.
Today, Juneteenth has become commercialized, celebrated with Juneteenth cups and t-shirts and other memorabilia, Collins said.
Junteenth celebrations usually feature flags such as a red, white and blue flag with a star in the center, the same colors as the American flag, Collins said.
There's also the Pan African colors, or red, black and green.
For previous Juneteenth celebrations, Black people would often celebrate with whatever food and drinks were available, such as red drinks or red punch as opposed to water.
Watermelon is often enjoyed as it's easy to cut up and disperse, almost like a cake, he said. Today, there are also Juneteenth pageants, parades, and festivals with music and speeches.
Some people believe individuals can't celebrate both Juneteenth and the Fourth of July, but this isn't the case, Collins said.
'The Fourth of July is a freedom birthday for the country, and June 19 is a freedom birthday for the formerly enslaved,' he told USA TODAY.
He also stressed that there were people living in what is now known as the United States before 1776. When historians and community members talk about Juneteenth, it's important not to forget Indigenous people, he said.
Juneteenth also isn't just a Texas holiday, and it isn't only for Black people, he said. It's for everyone to celebrate freedom and liberty.
Collins thinks of the history of the U.S. as a salad, made up of different stories. Each date, holiday, and event helps to complete the salad, he said.
'By adding Juneteenth, the national holiday, we flavor up the history, and we expand the narrative to tell the full story of the contributions of everyone in the history of everyone in our community,' he said.
Even Cinco De Mayo is tied to Juneteenth, Collins said. On May 5, 1862, a Mexican army defeated French forces in the Battle of Puebla. French Emperor Napoleon III had plans to provide the Confederacy with guns in exchange for cotton, but the French were defeated and didn't return until about a year later in May 1863.
Some historians believe this pushback allowed then-president Abraham Lincoln's generals to win Union victories before the French could give the Confederacy 'upgraded artillery and munitions,' per History.com.
'We need to acknowledge all of this history and tell the full story,' Collins said 'The national holiday helps to repair the foundation of our American history's story.'
Contributing: Matthew Brown, Chelsey Cox, and N'dea Yancey-Bragg
Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY's NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Email her at sdmartin@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What is Juneteenth? Explaining the holiday's meaning and origins
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Miami Herald
11 hours ago
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Shorebirds in Florida are losing habitat. Living shorelines are part of the solution
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Mosquito Lagoon stretches south into Brevard County, which prohibits the installation of new shoreline hardening structures except in emergency situations. Good for birds, good for fish — and good for us In certain cases, seawalls might be the best way to stabilize a shoreline, Evans said: such as at a port, where huge waves are constantly rolling in from ship traffic. But generally, he said, living shorelines are a highly effective, more environmentally friendly — and, often, more affordable — solution. '[It's] a win-win,' Evans said. 'We're getting the fisheries back that we want, we're getting the water quality back that we want. We're getting those benefits, and we're also getting the benefit of reduced amounts of erosion.' Hybrid solutions, like a buried seawall, can also be an effective alternative to fully hardening a shoreline, Evans said. For those structures, a hardened seawall serves as the core, buried beneath a sandy dune layer that often features native vegetation more conducive to wildlife habitat. For oystercatchers in the Mosquito Lagoon, a living shoreline can serve as valuable high ground for the birds to roost during high tide, without straying far from the oyster reefs they depend on for food. And a living system of mangroves and marsh grasses comes with another superpower, Evans said: built-in resilience. The native plants' roots help hold sediment from the lagoon in place, effectively allowing the land to 'grow up.' 'Even as the sea rises, then your mangroves can, in theory, keep up with it, because they're grabbing sediments,' Evans said. 'Just like a seawall is engineered, living shorelines are engineered: to stabilize, to withstand storms, and even in some cases to withstand a little bit of sea level rise.' Shorelines and beaches naturally shift over time, drifting and changing shape with the winds and waves. That makes a living shoreline's capacity to adapt to its surroundings — unlike a static seawall — one of its biggest strengths, said Melinda Donnelly, an assistant research scientist and biology professor at UCF who works with Walters. Right now, Donnelly is working on a model to help predict where in the Indian River Lagoon living shorelines are most likely to succeed, based on variables like tidal conditions and wave energy thresholds for different plants. Many previous living shoreline projects have largely relied on trial and error, Donnelly said. The goal is for the model to help maximize time and resources when planning how to stabilize a shoreline, and ultimately 'end up with sort of a combination of methods, rather than just basically hardening every shoreline throughout the lagoon,' Donnelly said. Especially over time, more living shorelines will translate to a healthier lagoon ecosystem overall, Walters said. That means more attractive shorebird habitat. 'It's good for birds, it's good for fish. It's good for commercial species, recreational species,' Walters said. 'It's good for all the plants and just everything in the lagoon. So basically, it means it's good for us.' 'A lot of potential' Moving forward, managing the species' continued recovery in Florida will require prioritizing ways to help nesting oystercatchers. Right now, there are only 419 breeding adults documented statewide, according to Brush with FWC. In 2013, there were also fewer than 500, according to the agency's species action plan. 'Because there's not that many birds, every single nesting pair is important. And every time you get a new nesting pair entering the breeding population, that's huge,' Brush said. Specifically along the Atlantic coast in Central Florida, there is great opportunity to help grow oystercatcher populations, Brush said. 'In general, where we are seeing birds try to enter the breeding population in great numbers [in Florida] is along the Atlantic coast.' But the challenge of habitat loss and degradation persists, especially as Central Florida's coasts are developed and hardened. If more oystercatchers here are to grow and breed successfully, improving habitat conditions will be critical. 'At some point, we will be limited by available habitat,' Brush said. 'There's a lot of potential to grow the population of oystercatchers on the Atlantic coast … if we have some more resources to dedicate toward habitat enhancement and restoration.' While resources are limited, Brush said, FWC is adept at making good use of them. 'We're constantly in FWC keeping the pulse on how species are doing, and where we need to allocate resources where species may not be doing as well.' One huge part of that equation, Brush said, is partnership. The national oystercatcher working group helps foster collaboration between states. 'We watched our local population improve in Florida as part of that network,' Brush said. 'The state of Florida can't do it without our conservation partners.' A culture of partnership will be crucial to continuing American oystercatchers' recovery, according to conservation experts. Although oystercatchers have made promising gains in the last 15 years, the work is by no means over. The (flight) path forward: 'It takes a village' Oystercatchers continue to face existential threats, from predators like rats and raccoons to habitat loss caused by human interference, sea level rise and storms. 'The difference is we as a working group have discovered many of the ways to manage and mitigate many of those threats, as long as we have people in the field doing that work,' Schulte said. That last piece is critical — and a growing concern for wildlife experts like Schulte, as the Trump administration's sweeping 'waste-reduction' measures usher longtime experts out of staff positions and interrupt some grant-funded projects already underway. It's not uncommon for conservation funds to fluctuate between (and sometimes during) presidential administrations, Schulte said. But this time is different. 'There's always uncertainty. It's never been like: 'We're stopping everything,' and no necessary guarantee as to whether it's going back,' Schulte said. 'We haven't seen that before, at all, where a project that's underway gets canceled.' Nationally and within states where oystercatchers breed, including Florida, government agencies are now missing some core personnel who made up the 'bedrock' of shorebird conservation, Schulte said. 'We're seeing it kind of everywhere, especially with state and federal employees, who are usually the most consistent and stable aspect of the group,' Schulte said in late May. 'Some of these people were coordinating multiple sets of volunteers, or out there in the field themselves, doing a lot of this assessment work.' Departing experts take with them a depth of specialized knowledge, often built up over decades of fieldwork and experience. 'It's a huge loss. And it's hard to quantify,' Schulte said. 'It's not universal. But it's very widespread, and it is having significant impacts on our ability to do basic conservation work.' Fewer experienced people in the field means fewer, less robust assessments of shorebird health, Schulte said. 'We actually won't know as much information about how well the birds are doing … or what the challenges are.' Restoring shorebird populations is a long-term commitment, Schulte said. Even in the smoothest of political climates, armed with the newest and best science, conservation experts know their work is bound to involve a certain level of uncertainty. Instead of running away from the inevitable, Brush, with FWC, said she focuses on learning from the (literally) changing tides. 'We need to keep looking for opportunities while we're navigating the uncertainty. 'That uncertainty is always looming,' Brush said. 'When a storm hits, you have to be looking for opportunity as you're evaluating your habitat loss.' Adaptation is no strange concept in a state where hurricanes routinely ravage and refashion coastlines and communities. Still, the ability to quickly pivot and seek out new possible solutions requires a strong foundation, like the network of partners making up the oystercatcher working group. And citizen scientists, like Hartgrove in Port Orange, are also 'absolutely instrumental' to shorebird recovery, Brush said. 'It takes a village,' Brush said. 'There's always opportunities. You just have to look for them.'
UPI
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