History of JuneteentH

Revolution, Ratification and the End of Jubilee

For the 5000 Blacks who served in the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence was the hope and promise of freedom in exchange for their service. Many Blacks at the time regarded July 4, 1776 as their “day of Jubilee”. However, the ratification of the US Constitution not only failed to abolish slavery, but in several clauses, served to legalize it. The sweet promise of freedom soured to a bitter reality, as many Black Revolutionary War veterans were returned to slavery in the South. Those who fled would become central figures in the antislavery/abolitionist movement in the North, including but not limited to Revs. Absalom Jones and Henry Highland Garnet; Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

The Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves (January 1, 1808)

The 1808 Act, signed into law by Thomas Jefferson, ended the transatlantic slave trade by imposing heavy penalties on international traders, but did not end slavery itself nor the domestic sale of slaves. In fact, ships caught illegally trading were often brought into the United States and its passengers sold into slavery. The law would also serve to drive the slave trade underground, thereby doing very little to thwart progression of the “peculiar institution”.

The Missouri Compromise (March 3, 1820)

In 1820, amid growing tensions over the issue of slavery, the U.S. Congress passed a law that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while banning slavery from the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands. The House passed the Senate version of the bill and President James Monroe signed it into law.

Nat Turner’s Rebellion (August 31, 1831)

Turner was born on a Virginia plantation. Educated in reading, writing, and religion while enslaved, Turner became a fiery preacher and leader of enslaved Africans on Benjamin Turner’s plantation and in his Southampton County neighborhood, claiming that he was chosen by God to lead them from bondage. Turner led a rebellion of enslaved people, which set off a massacre of up to 200 Blacks and a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of enslaved people (also known as “Black Codes”). The rebellion put fear in the heart of white Southerners, deepening the divide between slave-holders and “free-soilers” (an anti-slavery political party) that would culminate in war.

The Compromise of 1850

the Missouri Compromise failed to resolve the pressing question of slavery and its place in the nation’s future. Southerners who opposed the Missouri Compromise did so because it set a precedent for Congress to make laws concerning slavery, while Northerners disliked the law because it meant slavery was expanded into new territories. Fearful of the growing division between North and South over the issue of slavery, the Compromise was enacted with the hope that it would avert civil war.

The Compromise of 1850 was made up of five (5) bills that attempted to resolve disputes over slavery in new territories added to the United States in the wake of the Mexican-American War (1846-48): It admitted California as a free state (1), left Utah and New Mexico to decide for themselves whether to be a slave state or a free state (2-3) and defined a new Texas-New Mexico boundary (4).

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 – The first Fugitive Slave Act was passed by Congress in 1793 and authorized local governments to seize and return people who had escaped slavery to their owners while imposing penalties on anyone who had attempted to help them gain their freedom. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the last of the aforementioned five bills that made up the Compromise of 1850, compelled all citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves and denied enslaved people the right to a jury trial. It also placed control of individual cases in the hands of federal commissioners, who were paid more for returning a suspected slave than for freeing them, leading many to argue the law was biased in favor of Southern slaveholders.

Sanford v. Dred Scott (March 6, 1857)

In 1834, Dred Scott, an enslaved man, had been taken to Illinois, a free state, and then Wisconsin territory, where the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery. Scott lived in Wisconsin with his master, Dr. John Emerson, for several years before returning to Missouri, a slave state. In 1846, after Emerson died, Scott sued his master’s widow for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived as a resident of a free state and territory. He won his suit in a lower court, but the Missouri supreme court reversed the decision. After 11 years of litigation and trials won and lost, Scott would be finally denied his freedom by the US Supreme Court. The infamous Dred Scott Decision outraged abolitionists, who saw the Supreme Court’s ruling as a way to stop debate about slavery in the territories. The divide between North and South over slavery grew and culminated in the secession of southern states from the Union and the creation of the Confederate States of America.

John Brown and Harper’s Ferry (October 16-18, 1859)

In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against pro-slavery forces in that territory. After pro-slavery men raided the abolitionist town of Lawrence, KS on May 21, 1856, Brown personally sought revenge. Several days later, he and his sons attacked a group of cabins along Pottawatomie Creek, killing five men and triggering a summer of guerilla warfare in the troubled territory. One of Brown’s sons was killed in the fighting. By 1857, Brown returned to the East and began raising money to carry out his vision of a mass uprising of slaves. He secured the backing of six prominent abolitionists, known as the “Secret Six,” and assembled an invasion force. His “army” grew to include more than 20 men, including several Black men and three of Brown’s sons. The group rented a Maryland farm near Harpers Ferry and prepared for the assault.

On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and his band overran the federal arsenal. Word of the raid spread and by the following day Brown and his men were surrounded. On October 18, a company of U.S. Marines, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee (1808-70) overran Brown and his followers. Brown was wounded and captured, while 10 of his men were killed, including two of his sons. Although the raid failed, it inflamed sectional tensions and raised the stakes for the 1860 presidential election. Brown’s raid helped make any further accommodation between North and South nearly impossible and thus became an important impetus of the Civil War.

The Civil War

In 1854, the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essentially opened all new territories to slavery. Pro- and anti-slavery forces struggled violently in “Bleeding Kansas,” while opposition to the act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party, a new political entity based on the principle of opposing slavery’s extension into the western territories. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case confirmed the legality of slavery in the territories, John Brown’s raid convinced more and more southerners that their northern neighbors were bent on the destruction of the “peculiar institution” that sustained them. After decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion, Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 was the final straw, and within three months seven southern states–South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas–had seceded from the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863)

Lincoln used the Union victory at Antietam to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which freed all enslaved people in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863. He justified his decision as a wartime measure, which left the enslaved in the border Union states remaining in bondage. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side. By the war’s end in 1865, over 186,000 Black Civil War soldiers had joined the Union Army and 38,000 had lost their lives.

Juneteenth (June 19, 1865)

The freedom promised in the Emancipation Proclamation was finally delivered to the over 250,000 people who remained enslaved in Texas two and a half years after President Lincoln’s historic proclamation and two months after Union victory in the Civil War. This day has come to be known as Juneteenth, a combination of June and 19th. It is also called Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, and it is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Emancipation, however, was not a singular event in United States history. There were many emancipation days as enslaved people obtained their freedom in the decades spanning American independence through the Civil War. They were an important element of the abolition movement, which fought to end chattel slavery and liberate the millions held in bondage across the country. That goal was not fully realized until December 6, 1865, when the requisite number of states ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, legally ending slavery in the United States.

Emancipation Park

Sparked by the desire to have a place to commemorate the anniversary of their emancipation (“Juneteenth”), community members (all formerly enslaved) in the Fourth and Third Wards led by Reverend Jack Yates, Richard Allen, Richard Brock, and Reverend Elias Dibble united to raise $800 to purchase 10 acres of park land to host Juneteenth Celebrations. This is significant, not only as a ritual of remembrance and celebration, but also as an early act of exercising the new right of property ownership. The park was the home of the first De-ro-loc No-tsu-oh (“colored Houston” spelled backwards) carnival in 1909. The carnival was patterned after the No-tsu-oh carnival, and included attractions such as a Wild West show and a football game between Prairie View and Bishop Colleges. Emancipation Park exists as the first and oldest park in the state of Texas.