Annie McCary remembers seeing the signs designating public restrooms as “whites only” and “colored” growing up in Selma, Alabama.
She remembers going to White schools, but having to take a separate bus from the White students heading to the same school. And she remembers the White kids sitting on one side of the classroom, the Black kids on the other.
She would go home after school, she said, and ask her mom why she was being treated differently, and her mom would tell her that’s just the way it was.
The pain of McCary’s past is never far from her mind, but she doesn’t let it dampen her spirit. Instead, she uses it as a call for change.
On Saturday, June 19, McCary joined other members of the African American Heritage Club of Laguna Woods in a joyous Juneteenth celebration, commemorating the day in 1865 when news of emancipation reached slaves in Galveston, Texas. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, ending slavery in the United States, but it took two and a half years for Union soldiers to reach the community in Texas and for those slaves to be freed.
The club’s Juneteenth celebration and those around the nation Saturday were made sweeter this year when last week Congress passed and President Biden quickly signed legislation establishing Juneteenth as a national federal holiday – the newest one since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was declared in 1983.
About 20 members of the 32-strong African American Heritage Club held their celebration in the courtyard of Clubhouse 5, marking the occasion with music and dancing; traditional foods such as fried chicken, red beans and rice, collard greens and grains; games of dominoes; and party games with prizes hosted by Dr. Sparkle, aka Dr. Frankie Maryland-Alston. It was also the first time since the start of the pandemic that club members gathered in person.
When asked what the day meant to them, celebrants gave quick answers: togetherness, fellowship, bonding, reuniting.
“It’s an amazing day in history,” McCary told the group at the start of the festivities. Juneteenth will now “forever be remembered,” she said, but there’s “still work to be done.”
Establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday, McCary said in an interview, opens it up to dialogue and “keeps awareness of slavery in the forefront of people’s minds, how people have been treated. It inspires us to do better in treating people, not based on their skin color, but on the fact that they’re human beings.”
Although McCary said she realizes a federal holiday “can’t mandate humanity,” her hope is that it “reminds us that we are a nation of good people and that we can be better.”
Club member Willie Phillips also sees the creation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday as a good first step. Phillips, 71, originally of Shreveport, Louisiana, knows firsthand the hardships African Americans have endured: His grandfather was a slave, his father a sharecropper, and he himself picked cotton.
Juneteenth “reminds us of the cruelty and injustice of delaying the freedom of the other slaves and not doing anything about it,” Phillips said.
Like McCary, Phillips said he believes the federal holiday will lead to dialogue, bringing to the forefront all those things that have been “swept under the rug,” such as the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“It’s an opportunity to talk about it openly, shine a light on things that have been in the dark,” Phillips said.
Still, he said, change will come slowly, perhaps taking decades before African Americans are treated as equals in America, although the federal holiday is a “step in the right direction.”
Club member Allan Williams, a native of Kingston, New York, whose grandparents migrated north from North Carolina, didn’t know about Juneteenth until about five years ago. It just wasn’t taught in school, he said.
Now, with the federal holiday, “people can be aware of the atrocities that others had to endure,” and hopefully it will be taught in schools, he said.
Dr. Maryland-Alston also feels the federal holiday will help people get a “better understanding” of black history, she said.
Maryland-Alston, 77, was born and raised in San Pedro, after her parents moved north from Louisiana. She’s been celebrating Juneteenth all her life, she said.
“People are becoming more aware of the facts (of slavery),” she said. “It’s not a mirage — it really did happen.”
And the creation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday will further help accomplish that, she said. “It’s our time. We’re moving forward, not going backwards.”
Those celebrating Saturday called it simply recognition, forever change, a new beginning.
The Link LonkJune 27, 2021 at 08:58AM
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Laguna Woods club celebrates Juneteenth as a new federal holiday - OCRegister
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