Juneteenth ‘21

It all started when…

What is Juneteenth?

On June 19, 1865, about two months after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Va., Gordon Granger, a Union general, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African-Americans of their freedom and that the Civil War had ended. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued more than two and a half years earlier on Jan. 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln.

The holiday received its name by combining June and 19. The day is also sometimes called “Juneteenth Independence Day,” “Freedom Day” or “Emancipation Day.”

In 1980, Texas became the first state to designate Juneteenth as a holiday, though the recognition is largely symbolic. Since then, at least 45 states and the District of Columbia have moved to officially recognize the day.

The inspiration behind the first annual bySaulGood Juneteenth ‘21 capsule collection is varied, being perfectly transparent, last year was the first time in my life that I felt I properly celebrated Juneteenth. Prior to last year, although, i had been to bbqs in its honor, i’m ashamed to say that my knowledge on the subject was lacking. In the spirit of being thorough, I went on an obsessive research assignment to find everything related to the history of Juneteenth, surprisingly a lot of what I found was just surface information. Persistent, nonetheless, I found myself on the library of congress’s website.

Some of the most haunting aspects of the stories are the matter-of-fact nature in which they’re related, both in interview transcripts and in recordings. Through the crackles and hisses of a 1940 recording in Jasper, Texas, the voice of Billy McCrea shines through, narrating his youth “way back in slavery time.”

“Right at the creek there, they take them (runaways) and put them on…a log, lay them down and fasten the and whup them,” McCrea tells interviewer Ruby Lomax. “You hear them (runaways) hollering and praying on them logs….Now I see all of that when I was a boy.”for the first time in my life

we pulled conceptual inspiration from a few different things.

Marcus Gavey’s Red Black & Green Flag (UNIA)

Kente Cloth Graduation Stole

Kente Cloth