'Freedom is for everyone': Sun shines on Las Cruces Juneteenth celebration

LAS CRUCES — New Mexico State University celebrated Juneteenth much as Bobbie Green remembers observing it in her childhood: Outdoors on a summer day, eating barbecue beneath trees and sunshine, relating the story of how chattel slavery in the United States came to an end.

“We used to celebrate Juneteenth every year out in Apodaca Park,” Green, the president of the Doña Ana County chapter of the NAACP, said in an interview. “I didn’t really understand the significance of it, because of course we didn’t read about it in school. I didn’t learn about it, really, until later on as I got older.”

The holiday commemorates the June 19, 1865, arrival of Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger to Galveston, Texas, to read General Order No. 3, informing the people of Texas that, per President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, “all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.”

Masters would now be employers instead, the order stated, while the freedmen were directed to “remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.”

President Joe Biden established Juneteenth as a federal holiday in 2021, but celebrations date back to 1866.

”We call it the Black Independence Day,” Green — herself a descendant of enslaved people brought to the U.S. from the Ivory Coast and Nigeria — continued. “It’s the equivalent of the Fourth of July because it’s the day that Black people actually got their independence, even though emancipation was signed two and a half years earlier.”

On a stage outside the NMSU student union building, in front of a diverse mix of students, staff and families sitting in the shade of trees or tents set up for the event, Natalie Thomas shared the story once more as children looked on.

“They didn’t let them know; they just continued to reap the benefits of their labor … until we had white and Black soldiers come down and make them aware that they were free, and had been,” Thomas, NMSU’s Black Programs coordinator, said. “Freedom is for everyone. Freedom is for everyone that wants to live how they want to live.”

The general order itself was read aloud from the stage by Daymeon Rembert, dressed as a Buffalo Soldier — one of the African American cavalry or infantry soldiers belonging to Army regiments founded in the 19th century.

Rembert, a visual and performing artist, was also there as a presenter about Black-owned businesses, talking to visitors about his bicycle shop and art gallery in Truth or Consequences, BikeWyrks. Along with Kristl Walker of Rio Rancho, the two spoke of entrepreneurship as a demanding path and an expression of freedom all at once.

“I work from my heart,” Rembert said. “I don’t want to backtrack. I’d like to do things that will fulfill my life.” In the process, he said he has watched a community grow around his contribution to the city’s life.

Walker, whose daughter is an emerging junior at NMSU, sat behind a table loaded with T-shirts, travel mugs, key fobs and various other items bearing her designs and witticisms, marketed online under her enterprise, Kristl’s Kreations. The T-shirt she wore read: “Please buy my crafts. I’m not built for OnlyFans.”

Outside, with the temperature edging over 100 degrees, a long line formed for the community barbecue and cold drinks.

Juneteenth festivities have been staged through the week, including a series of concerts hosted by the New Mexico Juneteenth Jazz Arts Festival and the city’s Branigan Cultural Center. The NAACP will hold its annual Juneteenth banquet Saturday evening at the Las Cruces Convention Center.