June 19, 1956, fell on a Tuesday. It was 90 years to the day from the first celebration of Juneteenth, commemorating the day when enslaved Africans in Texas became the last in the nation to receive word of their freedom, more than a year after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the end of the American Civil War.
That 1950s Juneteenth celebration is the one my mother, Freddie Mae Rhodes (pictured here), can remember from her childhood and the one whose details she relayed to me.
It was a hot day in northern Louisiana, summer impatiently inserting itself into spring. She lived in the small town of Gibsland, Louisiana, with her mother, a domestic worker; her father, a World War II hero and farmer; and her younger brother.
She was 14 years old and wasn’t sure what the day meant. She couldn’t remember being taught about it. For her, it was simply a day on which Black people celebrated, “a day of fun,” as if proclaimed by community consensus.
Black people in that area celebrated together in a field in front of an abandoned African American elementary school in the hamlet of Mount Lebanon, three miles south of Gibsland. My mother was excited for the day’s outing because such outings were rare. And she had a special outfit for the day: a store-bought orange blouse with puff sleeves and a matching orange skirt, which had a placket on the side, made by her mother. She pulled her hair back into a single ponytail, plaited it down to her shoulders, and slipped into a pair of $2 shoes and bobby socks.
Read about Opal Lee, “the grandmother of Juneteenth.”
The family piled into the family car and drove south on Highway 154 to the field. When they arrived, people were already there. Some had arrived by car, some on wagons, some by foot. Many, like my mother’s family, had packed their own picnics: fried chicken, rolls, and cakes—foods that wouldn’t sour in the sun. There were also barbecues. A Black man from Gibsland sold glass-bottled sodas and homemade ice cream. “I don’t know how he kept that ice cream frozen,” my mother pondered in a 2023 conversation.
There were organized baseball games played among the men, and there was music supplied by anyone who could play a guitar. People danced and sang. The children ran and played. There were cakewalks and penny marches.
And, of course, for my mother, a teenage girl, there were the boys. “Listen,” she said, “everybody was excited to see the boys.” And she made sure that the boys saw her. “You stayed in the light, you stayed in the opening,” she said, because you didn’t want to “get out of sight.”
There were no lights in the field, so, as the day lost its light, the festivities wound down. My mother and her family headed home, but for those who stayed, there was a service across the street, with guest singing groups, at Springfield Baptist Church. The celebration lasted all day and into the night.
Over time the celebrations at that site dwindled as the population in the area declined. They finally ceased in the late 1960s. Many children of my mother’s generation were educated, some the first in their families to be so, and forswore farm life and moved away, catching the tail end of the Great Migration.
My mother, on the other hand, didn’t leave. She still lives in Gibsland, a town shrinking around her, and she has never stopped celebrating Juneteenth, especially after its meaning became clear to her, even if the celebration was simply her preparing a special meal for the family.
But Mount Lebanon is now home to only a handful of families. Springfield Baptist Church also remains. But as for the field where a smiling girl in an orange skirt and blouse once stood in the light, surrounded by picnickers, music, laughter, and the crack of baseball bats, it is now just an overflow parking area for Sunday services.
The celebration at that spot exists now as a memory, faint laughter riding a soft breeze.
Taken from interviews with Freddie Mae Rhodes Blow, age 81, and Barbara Richardson, 85, both of Gibsland, Louisiana.