Modesto, Turlock Juneteenth events celebrate Black culture while connecting history
Community organizations hosted Juneteenth events in Modesto and Turlock on Friday to celebrate Black culture and explain how history relates to today’s protests against racial injustice.
Marchers and performers commemorated Juneteenth while calling attention to how the killings of George Floyd and others demonstrate an ongoing struggle for freedom.
“The fact that it took two years after the emancipation of slavery for all slaves to get the notice that they were free is a huge symbol of what’s going on in America right now,” said Shanice Brown, an organizer of the Turlock Juneteenth celebration. “It is a celebration, but it’s also very sad to even know that this had to be another day in history.”
Las Dalias, a Turlock organization empowering Black and brown communities, hosted the gathering at Donnelly Park while Never Stay Silent, a group against social injustices, put on the rally at Cesar Chavez Park in Modesto. The latter began with a march while another group led a protest that ended at the Turlock event. Both featured speeches and poetry performances.
How Juneteenth came to Stanislaus County
Juneteenth honors June 19, 1865, the day a Union army general enforced the two-year-old Emancipation Proclamation in Gaveston, Texas, said Mary Roaf, an assistant professor of ethnic studies at California State University, Stanislaus. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ended slavery, mandated equal protection under the law and gave formerly enslaved Black men voting rights, but Roaf said Texans started the Juneteenth holiday to celebrate freedom.
The holiday spread across the nation during the Great Migration, when millions of African-Americans fled the south and anti-Black violence there, Roaf said. Juneteenth events have been held in Modesto for decades, but Brown, 27, said she believes the celebration Friday was Turlock’s first.
“I never thought I would see this day in Turlock,” said Nichara Holcombe, a vendor at the event who sold her cosmetic goods. “I think it’s surprising to everybody that we’re having (a Juneteenth celebration) out here.”
A public Juneteenth celebration in predominately white Turlock is significant, Roaf said, because they tend to be held in places with large African-American populations. Marches and protests are also atypical for the holiday which tends to involve sharing food and family reunions, but Roaf said Juneteenth is directly tied to protests against racial injustice today.
“The main similarity is the absolutely relentless, irrepressible struggles that Black people continue to engage in to fully realize the promise of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,” Roaf said. “Of not only having it written on paper, but actually fully realizing it in practice.”
Finn Ceja, a 15-year-old Turlock High School student, was among the demonstrators who gathered at a Juneteenth protest on the intersection of Geer Road and Monte Vista Avenue. Holding a Black Lives Matter sign, he joined about 50 people in chanting “No justice, no peace.”
“I know you can’t always change people’s minds, but at least (I can try) opening up a conversation and getting them to do a little more research just to learn a little more to educate themselves,” Ceja said.
Calls for better Black history education
Brianna Jones, a co-founder of Never Stay Silent, described Juneteenth as an opportunity to reflect on Black culture. African-American history involves more than slavery, said Jones, who added that Juneteenth is an opportunity to educate people about African kingdoms as well as the importance and influence of Black music.
‘We are so much more than oppression, we are so much more than the chains and the poverty and everything that people say the stereotypes of Black people are and what we’ve been through,” Jones said. “We are so much more than that.”
Riley Cade, 16, said learning about Juneteenth and Black history within the community is especially meaningful because teachers at Turlock High School don’t cover the subjects. As she and her peers ran a Black Student Union fundraiser at the Turlock Juneteenth event, Cade explained how they are pushing for an ethnic studies requirement.
“African-American history is American history,” Cade said. “....We are human beings and we are deserving of rights. It’s important for people to know that when the colonists went to Africa, they did not steal slaves. They stole doctors, writers, scholars and architects — good, hard-working and intelligent people — and they made them slaves.”
This story was originally published June 20, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
