Orlando Juneteenth celebration canceled due to lightning, but holiday’s importance not washed away

The city of Orlando’s annual Juneteenth celebration, now in its second year, was canceled on Saturday within an hour of starting when a thunderstorm moved over Clear Lake Park, bringing with it the threat of lightning.

Rain had been scattered throughout the Orlando area all morning, but just as the event was beginning at 11 a.m., so was a downpour. Volunteers in white and yellow shirts hurried to a pavilion near the parking lot. Vendors, some who were still setting up, took shelter under tents. And the first performance of the day was cut. The rest of the event was later canceled.

Despite the cancelation of Orlando’s event, discussions surrounding this year’s Juneteenth have been affected by Florida’s political climate.

In May, the NAACP issued a travel advisory for Florida, saying that under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature, the state has become “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and L.G.B.T.Q.+ individuals.”

Citing book bans across the state, the formal advisory added, “Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

Kran Riley, president of the Orange County branch of the NAACP, told the Sentinel that Orlando is a safe place and that its city planned Juneteenth event is evidence of that.

“We’re telling people to come over to Florida, but just be aware, the laws have changed a lot in Florida and just be aware of it,” he said. “We are one in Orlando. We believe in inclusivity and so does the city.”

DeSantis was recently criticized for using his veto pen on Thursday to scratch off hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding in the state budget for programs that honor Black history, including $160,000 in funding for the annual 1619Fest in Orlando and an additional $200,000 for Florida’s Black Music Legacy.

Juneteenth — a combination of June and nineteenth — commemorates the date in 1856 when, months after the end of the Civil War and years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the last of the southern Black slaves in the United States learned they were free.

Marcia Goodwin, the director of community affairs for the city of Orlando, said it’s unfortunate this year’s festival had to be shut down, citing the many hours of labor by the Juneteenth planning committee as well as local community members, vendors and volunteers.

Forty vendors signed up for Saturday, many of them being Black-owned businesses and non-profits, though businesses of all kinds signed up through the city website, Goodwin said.

There were dozens of drawstring bags that were ready to be handed out. Inside of them were reading materials about Juneteenth, including a booklet for children, featuring drawing and word games related to the history and origin of the holiday.

“It’s an important historic marker that a lot of people don’t event know about,” Goodwin said. “This [coloring book] is a very intentional part of our effort — to educate, we want everyone, children included, to know what Juneteenth is and why it’s important.”

Tony Covington, 59, stood inside a pavilion watching the rain and chatted with some members of the Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church, for which he is a youth minister. He said he came to the park on Saturday because he wanted to celebrate Juneteenth and, especially, so the children of the church could get to know the significance of the holiday through a day of fun and excitement.

Covington, who works as a lawyer in Oviedo, said he didn’t learn about Juneteenth until six years ago, when his children came home from Trinity Preparatory School and talked about what they had learned that day in history class.

“I didn’t know really anything about it; I went to public schools and I’m a graduate of the University of Florida,” Covington said. “When my kids started talking about it, I got interested and did some research and that’s how I got to know about [Juneteenth]. Through my kids.”

He added that he hopes the public education system in Florida emphasizes its importance, as the federal and many state governments have. He said the laws passed by DeSantis that are, in part, aimed at reading materials in public schools is “not a good sign.”

Last year Orlando city commissioners in a unanimous vote officially recognized Juneteenth as a holiday, giving thousands of workers a paid day-off.

Daron Johnson, a 56-year-old veteran of the U.S. Military, is one of those people. On Saturday morning he sat on a bench in a pavilion near the parking lot, waiting out the rain. He had been there since 7 a.m. carrying supplies for the day’s celebration.

Johnson, who is a manager in the city’s Water Reclamation Division, said he doesn’t believe Florida is unsafe for the average Black person. He did say education is what he believes will ultimately move the state and the country forward.

“I think it’s outstanding what the city is doing,” he said, motioning to a group of children huddled nearby. “Look at these kids, I didn’t know about Juneteenth when I was there age. It’s education that’ll benefit us all.”

Orlando Commissioner Bakari Burns said he hopes the move by the city raises awareness about Juneteenth and, perhaps, will incline those who may not know its history to seek it out.

“I think because of the current political climate it is that much more important for us to have Juneteenth celebrations because it gives us the opportunity to help educate people about the significance and the importance of Juneteenth,” he said. “And with the city now making it a holiday, I’m hoping those who have that holiday will take that time to learn about it [and] share it with their families.”

Burns said he also didn’t learn about Juneteenth during his years in Florida’s public school system. He was introduced to it over 10 years ago when State Rep. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, gave a presentation at a church.

“Juneteenth is an example of how freedom was delayed for for Black people, and, with what happened in my case, education was delayed for me,” he said. “I didn’t learn about Juneteenth until I was 30. I’m almost embarrassed by that.”

“We had a meeting the other day, and there were some older people there that said that they just learned about Juneteenth,” Burns added. “I always thought, ‘Well, why didn’t my mother and my grandmother teach me about this?’ And that’s because they weren’t taught about it.”

The history of Juneteenth

Two months after the end of the Civil War and over two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freedom had not reached slaves in Texas, as local leaders and slave owners did not abide by Lincoln’s directive until they were forced to.

On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger — accompanied by his troops — arrived in Galveston, Texas, and read aloud General Order No. 3. “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free,” Granger said. “This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves…”

Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment six months later, officially abolishing slavery. The people of Texas held the first celebration of Juneteenth the following year, commemorating their freedom with picnics, barbeques and church events. And as many of them moved elsewhere in the country, they brought the tradition of Juneteenth with them.

But during Jim Crow, celebrations of Juneteenth largely died out, as it became difficult to observe because of segregation, according to the Washington Post.

Public celebration of Juneteenth made a resurgence in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. Namely when, in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., thousands of people from across the country joined the Poor People’s Campaign. They set up Resurrection City, an encampment that lasted six weeks, between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. They also held a Solidarity Day Rally on Juneteenth, when over 50,000 people marched on Washington; speakers that day included Coretta Scott King and Civil Rights activist Rev. Ralph Abernathy.

Texas in 1980 became the first to set aside Juneteenth as a state holiday. Currently the District of Columbia and at least 28 states legally recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday, meaning state government offices are closed and state workers have a paid day off, according to a Pew Research Center. Florida does not formally recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday, though it was one of the first states outside Texas to commemorate Juneteenth as a day of observance in the 1990s.

In 1994 came the creation of the National Juneteenth Observation Foundation, a nonprofit that pushed for Juneteenth to become a federal holiday and now continues to spread awareness of the day’s significance. It’s founding was, in part, a reaction to police brutality. One of the founders, Rev. John Mosley, told Time Magazine, “We were inspired by the horrific incidents [such as the videotaped beating] of Rodney King and the mistreatment of Black people by police in New Orleans and others around the country.”

The murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020 sparked widespread protests and demonstrations as well as a reckoning of race and policing in the United States. Momentum was reignited for national recognition of Juneteenth and, in 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill passed by Congress making June 19 a federal holiday — the first national holiday declared since Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

ccann@orlandosentinel.com