Rain can't dampen the spirits of Daytona Beach's 25th annual celebration of Juneteenth
DAYTONA BEACH — Beneath the tall trees of Cypress Park Saturday were dozens of vendors selling everything from boiled peanuts to bracelets.
Kids squealed with delight as they shot down inflatable slides, pungent smoke rising from grills cooking chicken and fish wafted through the air, and 80s music pouring out of speakers provided the soundtrack for the day.
It was a joyous festival to mark a triumphant event, the June 1865 announcement in Texas that all slaves there were free. It was the last state to spread that news, officially ending slavery in the United States.
Just steps from the park, Juneteenth was being commemorated inside the Midtown Cultural and Educational Center in a much more somber and soulful way.
Long rows of tables were covered with painful reminders of two centuries of slavery in the United States. There were rusted leg shackles for both adults and kids, and metal neck restraints. A thick rope used for hanging people and a wood-handled whip that once included blood-stained gun pellets on its tips to tear skin were also on display.
There were gruesome pictures of people who had been tortured and hung from nooses in public squares. One photo showed a hanging female slave in Jacksonville whose master was her father, and the father of her kids and grandkids.
Another gripping photo showed a Black woman nursing a white baby with this caption: "But we couldn't share a water fountain."
It was a difficult but powerful collection of 2,000 artifacts and photos mourning what was done to Black people in the United States, and celebrating what some of those slaves' ancestors achieved in the decades that followed.
The display was brought to Daytona Beach by two women from South Carolina who created the Sankofa African-American Museum On Wheels.
"I think it's awesome," said Jeffrey Smith, a Chicago resident who was in Daytona Beach visiting relatives.
Smith noted that he lives within walking distance of the burial place of Emmett Till, an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14 after being accused of offending a white woman.
Pony rides, pound cake contest and choo-choo train
Despite rain that pushed into Daytona Beach late Saturday morning and didn't let up until the afternoon, the Juneteenth party went on.
The city's celebration of the national holiday that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans began with a 5K run Saturday morning along Daytona's Riverfront Esplanade. Next came the inaugural Juneteenth Celebration Parade that wound through Daytona Beach's historic Midtown neighborhood.
The main event of the day was the 25th Annual Juneteenth Community Festival at Cypress Park on the southeast corner of Nova Road and George Engram Boulevard.
The family-friendly festival included live music, 138 local and out-of-state vendors selling a variety of food and merchandise, a traditional Bahamian band and dance troupe, children's games, choo-choo train rides, a 25-foot-tall rock climbing wall, pony rides, a petting zoo and a pound cake contest. Proceeds from the event will go toward college scholarships.
The Juneteenth festivities will continue Monday, when the 25th Annual Hometown Heroes Awards Banquet will be held at the Mori Hosseini Student Center on the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University campus. Daytona Beach-area residents who make a difference in the community will be honored at the banquet, which will include a full-course dinner and live entertainment.
The backstory on Juneteenth
The genesis of Juneteenth goes back 156 years. On June 19, 1865, Union Gen. Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston, Texas, stating that all enslaved people in the state were free. Texas was the last state to free its slaves.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation had freed slaves two and a half years earlier, and the Civil War had largely ended with the defeat of the Confederate states in April of 1865, Texas was the most remote of the slave states and had a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsistent.
Read about Daytona Beach Black history: Midtown, Daytona Beach's historic Black neighborhood, struggles to find a better future
No Daytona Juneteenth in 2020 and 2021: COVID-19 shuts down most Juneteenth celebrations in Volusia County for second year in a row
Florida slaves also got the news more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863. Florida's slaves were finally told they were free on May 20, 1865, a month earlier than slaves in Texas.
May 20th has become known as Florida's Emancipation Day. Slavery became illegal in the state when Union Brigadier Gen. Edward McCook formally announced the Emancipation Proclamation from the steps of the Knott House in Tallahassee on May 20, 1865, 11 days after the end of the Civil War.
You can reach Eileen at Eileen.Zaffiro@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Daytona Beach marked Juneteenth with a party in a city park
