In her book, “On Juneteenth,” Annette Gordon-Reed writes, “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: ‘Texas is a White man.’” She writes this early, in the second paragraph of chapter 1, but it’s not the first, and it wasn’t the last time that I felt like she was writing about Mississippi, too. A white man is certainly the image I feel most people conjure up when they think of this state, but we’re the Blackest state in the nation, a fact that made doing a special edition of the events newsletter for Juneteenth—one of the first decisions I made after stepping into this role earlier this month—a no-brainer.
However, five years after becoming a federal holiday, the elephant in the room for many white folks is still how or, indeed, if we should even be commemorating Juneteenth. My personal thoughts since it became a federal holiday have been, “This isn’t a day for or about me, and that’s OK.” Knowing from my own experience how the presence of even a well-meaning non-LGBTQ person in a space can limit queer expression, I’ve respectfully deferred public celebration of Juneteenth to Black Americans. But is that the right choice?
This year, I wasn’t just navigating this question personally. Because I view helping Mississippians become more active, engaged members in civic and community life as the mission of my role here at MFP, I was navigating it professionally as well: Do I have any place trying to lower barriers for non-Black Mississippians to participate in the celebration of this holiday?
I didn’t take this question lightly. I read, listened, asked questions, and even attended a Juneteenth event myself for the first time. Ultimately, I was forced to reconsider how respectful I was actually being by deferring public celebration of the day to only Black Americans. After reading a piece by A. E. Brooks-Key in Religion Dispatches titled “Why Don’t White People Show Up for Juneteenth The Way They Showed Up For George Floyd?” I was left wondering what it might mean for all Americans if white folks could as readily and comfortably show up for Black joy as we do in response to Black folks exhibiting what he called “superhuman levels of suffering or perseverance in the face of oppression.”
‘We’re Celebrating This Idea of Emancipation’
Juneteenth is a 160+ year-old living celebration that began as Jubilee Day celebrations in Texas soon after the enslaved people there finally secured their delayed emancipation, growing to eventually become a federal holiday in 2021. The meaning of the celebration has shifted over the years, but remains primarily focused on freedom, progress, hope and joy. As a geographer, I found the idea of Juneteenth’s meanings shifting across time and especially across space to be very interesting.
In order to find out more, I reached out to Michael Morris, the director of the Two Mississippi Museums (host of the annual Juneteenth Jubilee). While no one person can serve as a proxy for all Black Mississippians, Morris’s work as a public educator puts him in direct contact with more Black Mississippians’ thoughts and feelings on Juneteenth than probably anyone else. His work as a public historian is about synthesizing the breadth of Black historical experience into a coherent narrative without flattening it.
“Ultimately, it’s about this notion of freedom, and much of the work that we do in terms of public history at the museums is examining how Americans, how Mississippians, have defined freedom through the years,” Morris told me on Wednesday, June 10.
But he also stressed that there’s a certain context and nuance to the freedom being celebrated.
“When people ask me what it means for us to celebrate Juneteenth, what comes to mind is that we’re celebrating this idea of self-emancipation,” he said. “As early as 1862, as the Union Army is making their way through the Lower Mississippi Valley, there are enslaved people who are self-emancipating, and what that means to me is they’re not waiting on some piece of public policy or proclamation. They’re taking matters into their own hands and fleeing the plantations in droves. So to me, when I think about Juneteenth, it’s a single date, but on that day, we’re celebrating this notion of emancipation, of people that are liberating themselves throughout the Civil War.”
The Importance of Joy
“If the most important word that attaches itself to Juneteenth is freedom, then another word that has to go along with that, especially when we’re thinking about self-emancipation, is joy,” Michael Morris told me. “That’s why I keep using the term celebration, and I think that is so key, so important. Because, unfortunately, when people think about the Black experience, too often, we think about the tragedies. Too often, we just solely think about the institution of slavery, but it’s important to note that throughout all of the circumstances that Black Mississippians have gone through, they still experienced joy.”
The museum director later reflected on this idea of joy in contemporary celebrations of Juneteenth. The Two Museums are holding a Juneteenth Jubilee on Friday, June 19, from 4 to 8 p.m. with food trucks, line-dancing, a kids’ zone and an adults-only lounge, along with flash tours at 5 and 6 p.m. to “celebrate community, culture, and the emancipation of Black Americans.”
“You know, this is a tradition that was started by my predecessor, Pamela Junior, who was the inaugural director of the Civil Rights Museum and went on to lead both museums,” he said. “I’ve attended every Juneteenth celebration since we started this program, and what I love about it is the fact that there are a bunch of young people that come to that particular program.
“What I love about when I look out into the crowd, you know, I’m seeing young people, but then I also see folks that are a little bit more seasoned and they’re sharing the dance floor,” he continued. “The dance floor on this particular day is actually in the Hall of History, in our museum, and again, going back to this notion of joy, to me, there are few things more joyous than seeing a group of people sharing the dance floor. The expression on folks’ faces, the relaxation, the excitement, it’s really electric is the only word that I could think of, and I’m not a dancer, but just observing it just gives me excitement. It lifts my spirit.”
‘This Is an American Holiday’
Michael Morris told me that he hopes to see more people attend Juneteenth events this year.
“I’d love to see Mississippians of all walks of life come and celebrate this holiday because this is not just a holiday for African Americans. This is an American holiday,” the museum director said. “Like you said, it’s a federal holiday. And what we’re celebrating is this notion of American freedom, how it’s been defined in the past, but then also it’s an opportunity to reflect on how we’re gonna define American freedom in the future.”
So, should white people go to Juneteenth events? I can’t answer that for anyone but myself. What I can tell you is that reading the Brooks-Key piece really reframed how I viewed not showing up to Juneteenth celebrations and how the dearth of white attendance more generally could be perpetuating the harms that my deference was meant to avoid.
So, donning our matching shirts emblazoned with an Ida B. Wells quote to show solidarity, my husband, News Editor Ashton Pittman, and I went to Columbia, Mississippi’s Juneteenth Parade this past weekend.
We were aware that we were the only white folks there, but that didn’t mean it had to be awkward. We greeted folks warmly, and they greeted us warmly in return. We enjoyed snowcones from a vendor. The joy at this small town’s small gathering, even under the harsh sun, was palpable and contagious. As people danced their way down Main Street, the folks throwing candy and bracelets from the floats loaded us down. It certainly won’t be our last visit to a Juneteenth celebration.
Juneteenth Is an Origin Story For Us All
What sticks out to me about Two Mississippi Museums Director Michael Morris’s answer about the meaning of Juneteenth, in the context of the current historical moment, is that it reminds us that history is not predetermined. The enslaved were not waiting for emancipation to become popular or legal; they were seizing the available opportunities to emancipate themselves.
In the 1990s, I learned in Mississippi public schools that Rosa Parks was just a tired woman who one day simply had enough and spontaneously sparked a movement that changed the country, rather than a long-time organizer on a mission. Historical determinism, the idea that history is an orderly series of events that happen, with one leading to the next, had clearly insinuated itself as the historiographic backbone of public school history curricula. The result is that many who fully believe in the idea of multiracial democracy were trained to be passive, “wait(ing) out the clock until justice, somehow, wins.”
In reality, history happens through an interconnected web of factors, many of them unknowable, converging to create a context in which individuals act to literally make history. The irony is that the false understanding of how history works still would have effectively taught folks who don’t share the same ideas about democracy that they were going to have to fight like hell to reverse course. And they’ve been doing a damn good job of it for several decades.
InGoing back to “On Juneteenth,” Annette Gordon-Reed devotes an entire essay to the importance of origin stories “for individuals, groups of people, and for nations,” arguing that “they inform our sense of self; telling us what kind of people we believe we are, what kind of nation we believe we live in.”
As a white person, I want to be respectful of any Juneteenth event I attend by not taking up space from Black folks nor appropriating the day’s message into some misguided notions of colorblindness. Still, considering the Fourth of July is right around the corner and many Americans are feeling less patriotic than ever, Juneteenth offers some of us the opportunity to choose a different national origin story than the one we were raised with—one that emphasizes freedom, hope and joy.
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This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
