Tomorrow morning, Joe Kings of Portland, Me., will be up at dawn to get the fire going. Every year on the third Saturday in June, Mr. Kings's barbecued ribs, corn and spicy red beans draw hundreds of Maine residents — most of them white — to his celebration of a Texas holiday once celebrated only by blacks: Juneteenth.
With events including a small rap contest in Anchorage and a huge festival of African-American heritage in Baltimore, hundreds of thousands of Americans will celebrate Juneteenth, the day slavery in the United States effectively ended. With the arrival of an Army ship in Galveston on June 19, 1865, Texas was the last state to learn that the South had surrendered two months earlier. More than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, the 250,000 slaves in Texas were finally freed.
Juneteenth, which is traditionally celebrated on the third Saturday in June, began taking root across the country largely because of enthusiastic black "Texpats" like Mr. Kings, a retired Army medical administrator who spent 11 years stationed at Fort Hood, Tex. After buying a car repair business in Portland, he held a Juneteenth picnic the very first year.
"Even the black people here didn't know about Juneteenth," Mr. Kings said. "Now the white ladies come by on the first of June and start asking: `When's Juneteenth?' "
With its lighthearted name and tragicomic origins, Juneteenth appeals to many Americans by celebrating the end of slavery without dwelling on its legacy. Juneteenth, its celebrators say, is Martin Luther King's Birthday without the grieving.
"When I think of Martin, I can't help but see the dogs and the sticks and the little girls in the church," said Paul Herring, who has organized Juneteenth celebrations in Flint, Mich., for 10 years. "But when I think of Juneteenth, I see an old codger kicking up his heels and running down the road to tell everyone the happy news."
| Continue Julia Moskin's New York Times article "An Obscure Texas Celebration Makes Its Way Across the U.S."
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