Celebrating Juneteenth at St. Paul's

​Juneteenth (June 19th) marks our country’s second independence day. Although it has long been celebrated in the African American community, this monumental event remains largely unknown to most Americans.

---

On “Freedom’s Eve,” or the eve of January 1, 1863, the first Watch Night services took place. On that night, enslaved and free African Americans gathered in churches and private homes all across the country awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. At the stroke of midnight, prayers were answered as all enslaved people in Confederate States were declared legally free. Union soldiers, many of whom were black, marched onto plantations and across cities in the south reading small copies of the Emancipation Proclamation spreading the news of freedom in Confederate States. Only through the Thirteenth Amendment did emancipation end slavery throughout the United States.
But not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as "Juneteenth," by the newly freed people in Texas.
We will gather this coming Sunday, June 22nd, as an act of remembrance, repentance, and reparation, as we celebrate Juneteenth Freedom Day. We will remember the millions of African Americans who were stolen from their homelands, enslaved in bitter bondage, and who yearned always to breathe free in our Scriptures, prayers, and music. We repent of the ways in which we and those who have gone before us have been complicit in continuing systems of suppression, subjugation, and supremacy. We seek to repair the legacy of brokenness, brutality, and betrayal that perpetuates injustice and oppression in our own day. We gather together with the echoes of the past in our ears and hope of the future on our lips.