The 75 or so people who gathered June 19 for the annual Juneteenth commemoration in La Grange had a chance to hear the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. tell of some personal history.
“My story’s not a pleasant story and it’s not a pretty story, but it’s history,” said Parker, the keynote speaker at the event at The Corral at Lyons Township High School South Campus.
Parker grew up in nearby Summit and was the cousin of Emmett Till, who was murdered by Southern racists in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. He described the night Till was abducted and murdered, taken from their grandfather’s house in the middle of the night.
“That was the last time we saw Emmett alive,” Parker said.
Juneteenth, now a state and federal holiday, celebrates the day in 1865 that Union General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, with 2,000 troops and issued General Order No. 3, informing enslaved Texans of their freedom.
Although President Abraham Lincoln officially freed all those held in slavery with the Jan. 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, the actual end of the “peculiar institution” didn’t happen all at once.
The actual freeing of enslaved people occurred at varying times throughout the territories where slavery existed, depending on how far the Union Army had advanced.
Texas, being in what was then the far Southwest portion of the United States, was the last territory under federal command to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.
While the original celebrations of Juneteenth took place in Galveston, the holiday spread over time until it became the eleventh federal holiday in 2021.
In La Grange, the commemoration also featured speeches from Billy “Che” Brooks, former deputy minister of education for the Black Panther Party; Poshlyn Nicholson, of ChaseYouth; and Ramon Lacey, of Lace Up Athletics, the organizer and sponsor of the event.
“We support the community by building complete athletes for building a stronger community,” Lacey said. “We use physical fitness, mentorship, and community service to combat things like childhood obesity and the opportunity gap. We provide community service events like this and others.”
There were poetry readings by Nicholson and students from Nazareth Academy as well as a Juneteenth trivia game involving members of the audience. Actor Corin Rogers, of “Cooley High” had a Black history exhibit and took questions from the audience.
Nicholson was passionate in her discussion of the importance of celebrating the day.
“Juneteenth is a time of remembering what happened to our people and how we were disenfranchised,” she said. … “Myself, I was not aware of how much Juneteenth meant to our community until about five years ago.”
Brian Waterman, superintendent of Lyons Township High School District 204, welcomed the visitors to the temporary home of the Juneteenth celebration.
“I’m really excited that LT is the host school for it, I’ve went to it the last couple years,” he said. It’s usually at the Community Center, so we’re happy to step up and host this amazing event. It’s always an event that a wide variety of our community comes out to support. I think the organizers did a great job.”
Trustee Beth Augustine was among village leaders attending the event.
“It’s extremely moving and I look forward to it going forward,” she said.
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
