Juneteenth gains national recognition

In the mid-1970s, Charles E. Becknell, then in grade school, attended one of the first official Juneteenth celebrations in New Mexico.

At the time, the holiday commemorating the end of slavery was an obscure one to many people outside the Black community.

"The Black community always knew about Juneteenth," said Becknell, 53, now head of the Africana Studies program at the University of New Mexico. "It was and is a celebratory experience for native African New Mexicans."

"Ask the average New Mexican if they know it's a state holiday, they'd say no," said Joseph Powdrell, organizer of the Juneteenth celebration attended by Becknell.

Over four decades later, Juneteenth has gained national recognition. On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to make June 19 a federal holiday. On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed the bill into law, making Juneteenth the first new holiday since President Ronald Reagan made Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday in 1983.

Clovis has been celebrating Juneteenth since at least 1987, though no events were held last year or this week due largely to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the recognition likely began in Clovis community churches, it's been a widely known community event for more than a generation.

“It really is like a family reunion where every member knows the same games, sings the same songs that are not in songbooks and eats the same food not found in recipe books,” said Christy McNeal in 1992, when she helped organize the event at Roy Walker Center.

Anthony Mahan, today's president of Clovis' NAACP, along with Joyce Pollard, Selmus Price and others helped turn the event into an outdoor community celebration in the mid-1990s. The gathering has attracted 600-plus people since then, with volunteers starting at 4 a.m. to prepare free food for anyone who wanted to celebrate freedom.

“People bled for it, marched for it,” guest speaker Veda Ervin told the Clovis Juneteenth crowd in 2019. “We're still fighting for it today. Go vote for it. We are free.”

Mahan said the pandemic has impacted funding from the national NAACP chapter, but he expects Clovis will have a large gathering to celebrate Juneteenth next year. And he said designating the event as a national holiday was the right thing to do.

“It's never too late to do the right thing,” he said. “I'm just glad to see (slavery) is being acknowledged. Healing can never take place until we acknowledge what has happened in the past.”

Cathryn McGill, founder and director of New Mexico's Black History Organizing Committee, said the recognition of the holiday is significant “because it highlights the fact that Black history is American history."

Said Nikki Archuleta, founder of the first Black Lives Matter chapter in New Mexico: "Juneteenth should symbolize the survival of Black folks, our culture, our language, everything we have contributed to society. It's a celebration that (we) are still here. A celebration of joy and otherworldly resistance."

The history of Juneteenth stretches back to June 19, 1865, when a group of Union soldiers marched into Texas to announce the Civil War had ended and the Union won. Juneteenth, as it came to be known, commemorates the day a group of black Texans was finally freed, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. It has been celebrated ever since.

The Santa Fe New Mexican contributed to this report.