Celebrating Juneteenth

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Texas, bringing news that the Civil War had ended and that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued two and a half years earlier, was now the law of the land. The state was one of the last holdouts of the Confederate Army, and even after the news became widely known, white landowners continued trying to maintain their hold on the people they had enslaved. However, the news galvanized African-Americans across Texas. Some celebrated, others left to find family members from whom they had been separated, and still others continued fighting to free themselves from their oppressors.

In Asheville, African-Americans claimed their freedom on April 28, 1865, when Union cavalry arrived in the region. The state of North Carolina recognized Juneteenth as an official holiday in 2007, but celebrations began long before that. Today, June 19th is recognized across the nation as a holiday to celebrate and uplift African-American people, with food, speeches, gatherings, and activism.

This Juneteenth, we celebrate by asking members of our community to reflect on what the holiday means to them. Their answers, found in this video, are moving and enlightening. If you would like to hear more, you can view full interviews here: https://youtu.be/uSYMKUWWXs8 

To learn more about Juneteenth and the history of African-Americans in North Carolina, check out some of the books and interviews listed below. For more information about AfricanAmerican history in Asheville, contact Pack Memorial Library’s North Carolina Room or visit their web site, ncroom.buncombecounty.org.

• Further reading and listening about Juneteenth and the history of African-Americans in North Carolina
  • “What is Juneteenth?” By Henry Louis Gates, Jr., PBS.org
  • When All God’s Children Get Together: A Celebration of the Lives and Music of African American People in Far Western North Carolina, by Ann Miller Woodford
  • The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860, by John Hope Franklin
  • Reconstruction’s Ragged Edge: The Politics of Postwar Life in the Southern Mountains, by Steven E. Nash
  • Southern communities : identity, conflict, and memory in the American South ed. Steven E. Nash and Bruce E. Stewart
  • Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina by John C. Inscoe
  • Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation, ed. By John C. Inscoe
  • Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South by John C. Inscoe
  • The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina and the Civil War by John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney
  • Life Beneath The Veneer: The Black Community in Asheville, North Carolina from 1793 to 1900 by Darin Waters
  • We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard, ed. By Belinda Hurmence
  • North Carolina Slave Narratives: the lives of Moses Roper, Lunsford Lane, Moses Grandy, & Thomas H. Jones, ed. By William W. Andrews
  • “Juneteenth: remembering Asheville’s slaves in their own words,” by Elizabeth Anne Brown, Asheville Citizen-Times, June 19, 2019
  • An abolitionist in the Appalachian South : Ezekiel Birdseye on slavery, capitalism, and separate statehood in East Tennessee, 1841-1846
  • Sarah Gudger’s Journey to Freedom, by Katherine Calhoun Cutshall and Catherine Amos
  • The Black Asheville History Project, North Carolina Room at Pack Memorial Library
  • History harvest : the Black Asheville History Project: ask your elders roundtable, North Carolina Room at Pack Memorial Library
  • A black man's journey from sharecropper to college president : the life and work of William Johnson Trent, 1873-1963, by Judy Scales-Trent
  • Library of Congress Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
    • North Carolina, Part 1: Adams – Hunter
    • North Carolina, Part 2: Jackson - Yellerday
  • Interviews from the Library of Congress’s American Folk Life Center about Juneteenth
    • Wallace Quarterman, Fort Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia, June 1935
    • Uncle Billy McCrea, Jasper, Texas, 1940
    • Aunt Harriet Smith, Hempstead, Texas, 1941
    • Laura Smalley, Hempstead, Texas, 1941 (part 1 of 5)
    • Laura Smalley, Hempstead, Texas, 1941 (part 4 of 5)