Food, festivities mark Juneteenth commemoration

CLOVIS - On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which stated "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states, "are, and henceforward shall be free."

However - and as Juneteenth speaker Veda Ervin said, "There's always a however." - as the Civil War neared its third year of conflict, proclaiming something and enforcing it were two different things.

"Some people didn't see things that way," Ervin said. "Somebody shot the messenger."

Eventually, the Union forces prevailed and Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger came in June 1865 to Galveston, Texas, with news the war had ended. The abolition of slavery was no longer a promise or a proclamation, and would soon be policy throughout the United States.

"They didn't know what date it was," Ervin said. "It was somewhere in the teens."

So somewhere in the teen days of each June, Americans in Texas and the rest of the country celebrate freedom. For more than a quarter-century Clovis citizens have done just that, taking the Saturday that either falls between the 15th and 19th or just outside of it and celebrating with food and friends.

The scene Saturday at Potter Park was certainly a familiar one, with the scent of smoked meats wafting through the park and a nearly cloudless sky making shade the best thing to find. With the exception of last year, when a storm came through, that's how most Juneteenths go.

Organizer William Hall got his crew of volunteers ready to hand out ribs, links, chicken and catfish to anybody who came to celebrate freedom.

"Before we start, we feed all the seniors," Hall said. "I don't want them waiting in line. Then we serve everyone else."

The food is free to everybody who comes to the event, but there's a cost. Volunteers got to the park as early as 4 a.m., and Hall usually starts hitting up sponsors around February. It's a lot of work, and finding volunteers gets harder every year, but Hall has never liked the idea of food vendors making a profit off of such an important holiday.

Throughout the event, speakers, singers and dancers were on stage to celebrate the black experience.

Ervin, a member of the Clovis branch of the NAACP, told the crowd freedom is a constant struggle more than 150 years after slavery ended.

"People bled for it, marched for it," Ervin said. "We're still fighting for it today. Go vote for it. We are free."