Juneteenth

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Our Town: "In 1992, I stood in ankle-high weeds at Comanche Crossing in Mexia. I had come in part to write a story about Juneteenth. And I had come because, as a recent transplant to Texas, I was having a hard time understanding the holiday.

I quickly learned the historical facts: Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when Union Army officer Gordon Granger read the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston. The reading came two months after the end of the Civil War and more than two years after the document took effect. More than 200,000 Texas slaves were free.

But I couldn't see the soul of Juneteenth. It seemed buried under a plethora of city parades, Miss Juneteenth contests and catfish fries that sprang up to celebrate the occasion. When I visited Comanche Crossing, which is formally known as Booker T. Washington Emancipation Proclamation Park, nothing much was left. Former slaves had purchased the land in the late 1800s as a place to celebrate Juneteenth. Now there were rotting summer cottages, a semicircle of low wooden benches and my tour guide, Lewis Burnett Echols. "