Many know, and others are learning, that Juneteenth started as a holiday primarily in Texas, because it commemorated the day that enslaved Texans learned that they were emancipated, freed from the yoke of bondage. Over the years it has been celebrated with parades, special foods, picnics, barbecues, much the way July 4th is celebrated.
It was celebrated that way because the African American community in Texas saw it as the day that their freedom was finally supported and protected, rather than July 4th, when they or their ancestors were still enslaved, and as Frederick Douglass commented, “What to the slave is July 4th?” It is celebrated now by most African Americans, including in Randolph County, North Carolina, as exactly that, an African American “July 4th,” finally recognized as a federal holiday. Even though it was the ratification of 13th Amendment in December 1865 that finally, constitutionally, ended slavery, the celebration of June 19th, Juneteenth, continues as a day of remembrance and celebration.
Today, we continue to celebrate that date as a day of liberation, a day of freedom. What I’ve come to realize is that it was not just a day of freedom from slavery, but the beginning of freedom to do things that were previously forbidden – get an education and gather to worship unencumbered.
Reconstruction, the 20-30 years after the Civil War ending in the Jim Crow period, was marked by the establishment of independent Sabbath Schools and the Schools of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In fact, there was a Freedmen’s school, run by Aaron O. Hill, Jr., that served the communities we now know as Strieby and Lassiter Mill, in southwestern Randolph County, North Carolina. It was short-lived. The local Quakers also ran a school, but it was not a free school. A successful school, run by an African American was not established in that area until the Rev. Islay Walden returned to Randolph County with the help of the American Missionary Association (AMA), having earned his teaching degree from Howard University and his divinity degree from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary. As he had done in Washington, DC, where he established a successful Sabbath School, and in New Jersey, where he established an even more successful “Students’ Mission,” he started two schools in Randolph County with the help of the AMA. One was the school that became known as Strieby and the other, eight miles away, was Salem School. Both would endure well into the 20th century. Both would give birth to many teachers and education assistants in later generations.
Reconstruction was also marked by the freedom to establish places of worship, because their enslavers monitored heavily or did not permit their enslaved to gather, even for worship, for fear of “rebellion.” This was especially true after the Nat Turner “Rebellion.” One cannot escape the symbolism of that first Juneteenth celebration, where hundreds of formerly enslaved marched to Reedy Chapel AME Church as one of their first acts in freedom.
During Reconstruction every community sought to establish their own center of worship, in order to exercise their first amendment right of freedom of religion. Again, the Rev. Islay Walden established two Congregational church communities, one called “Promised Land,” now called, “Strieby,” and the other known as Salem. Both were supported by the AMA. Both churches flourished well into the 20th century, but their congregations have waned as younger generations have sought higher education and careers in other places around the country. Neither has an active worshipping community today.
Strieby continues to have one service a year on Homecoming Sunday in August but is otherwise a cultural heritage site where the grounds are open to the public, although the church building is only open by appointment. Rev. Walden’s spiritual leadership has, nonetheless, borne fruit as descendants living around the country continue to maintain strong ties with faith communities wherever they live and many have become ordained ministers or lay leaders.
What this history has taught me is that Juneteenth does not just celebrate an historic event from a century ago, but encourages us to recommit ourselves to those values, education and spiritual growth, that the newly emancipated understood would provide the fertile soil to grow and flourish in freedom and the tools to guard that freedom.
