Buffalo Juneteenth: On Target to Take 1st Place Trophy This Year!
by Betty Jean Grant
Betty Jean Grant
For years, at least since many of us have been paying attention, Buffalo’s Juneteenth Festival Inc. has been ranked somewhere in the top three of the cities that celebrated the Abolition of Slavery of enslaved Africans by President Abraham Lincoln. The federal decree that ended chattel slavery went into effect on January 1,1865. However, because the slave plantations owners in the state of Texas were greedy, along with being cruel, they somehow got the army people to ride, maybe, slow mules to Texas to let the enslaved African know that they had been freed. Those mules were so slow (probably were taking one step forward and two steps backwards, lol) that the soldiers did not arrive in Texas until the second week of June, in 1865.
Well, after they told the Black people they were free, many of them threw down those cotton hoes and started singing, dancing and celebrating, right then and there! The next year, around the 2nd week in June, the folks in Galveston Texas decided to commemorate the freeing of the enslaved people with a celebration. Since they could not remember the date, the army had come the year before, but they knew it was a day between June 13th and June 19th, they called the celebration Juneteenth and the rest is history!
In 1975, members of an organization in Buffalo called B.U.I.L.D. were not feeling the urge to celebrate the upcoming 200th anniversary of the United States of America on that year’s 4th of July or Independence Day. A leader of the B.U.I.L.D’s group named William Gaiter told the members about Juneteenth, Galveston Texas and how that city’s Black folks were still celebrating that little known cultural event over 150 years after they first started. The folks in Buffalo, New York embraced the celebration and the 1st Buffalo Juneteenth parade and festival was held in June 1976 on Jefferson Ave. The Juneteenth celebration has been held almost every year in June on Saturday and Sunday dates that fall between June 13-June 19th.
For years, the Buffalo Juneteenth Festival was either 2nd.or 3rd., either in front of or behind, Detroit, Michigan. Galveston was usually in the 1st place position as for the largest number of people attending the festival. Buffalo’s festival attendees’ numbers is still high, but our two competition cities are now Milwaukee and Minneapolis. June 13th and June 14th of this year is the 50th Anniversary year of Buffalo Juneteenth Festival, Inc.
This highly anticipated celebration, that has become a national holiday, will kick off with a parade of over 5000 participants, starting at the headquarters and marching down Genesee Street to the festival that will be in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. An added delight this year is the Juneteenth Festival, Inc. 50th Anniversary Gala that will be held Friday, June 5th at the Classic V Banquet at 2425 Niagara Falls Blvd, in Amherst, NY. The 500 available tickets sold out in less than a week!
Also, the Buffalo Juneteenth Flag Raising Ceremony will be held Monday, June 8th at 12 Noon in Niagara Square, across from Buffalo City Hall. Some numbers of experts are predicting that over 175,000 persons will attend the celebration in Dr. MLK Park on one or maybe both days of the festival this year. If those numbers do indeed bear out, y’all can just put that big ole trophy in our hands and crown the Buffalo Juneteenth Parade and Festival #1 in the land!