Episode 1 - “The Stories I Carry” "Juneteenth, I Hardly Knew You!"

A podcast where life meets story and story meets soul! I believe in the power of stories and storytelling. Each week I share a personal narrative, some poignant, some funny, some a blend of and fiction, a mix of fiction, faith and figments of my imagination. Born and raised in Texas, Juneteenth was an annual celebration but what I didn't know then was the back story, the history, my ancestry and culture. Just a black girl growing up in the Jim Crow South; Juneteenth I hardly knew you.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Stories. I carry a podcast
where life meets story and story meets soul. I'm Donna, writer, teacher,
and believer in the healing power of storytelling. Each week

(00:23):
I'll share a personal narrative, some poignant, some funny, all true,
and invite you to sit with me in the moment.
If this is your first time listening in, thank you
for June Again. If you've been walking this journey with

(00:44):
me for a while, welcome back, friend. Today's story is
called Juneteenth Memories. Today is July nineteenth. We called the
June teen in Texas, and this story is about Juneteenth.

(01:05):
Just barbecue and red kool aid. Then I moved to California.

(01:28):
Let me take you back a bit. I wasn't born
by the river in a little tent, but I was
born in Texas, San Antonio, Texas. To be exact. My
father was in the military, the Air Force, and he
was stationed at Lachland Air Force Base. My mother, on

(01:52):
the other hand, was raised in the country in Texas,
but moved to San Antonio at some point in time
after her graduation from high school to attend a beauty school.
I never knew to ask if it was a Madam C. J.
Walker Beauty school, but more than likely it was because

(02:16):
where else would an African American woman go to be
trained in the styling of African American hair. I just
never knew to ask until it was too late. You See,
what I didn't know back then was my history, my ancestry,
my culture. I didn't know what I needed to know.

(02:40):
I was just a black girl, little black girl growing
up in the Jim Crow South. I looked at the
nineteen forty census and my grandparents in Texas, little country
town in Texas. I don't know if I can even
call it a country town. Maybe it was a village

(03:02):
in south east Texas, I think. And I looked up
the nineteen forty census and there was my grandfather listed
as a farmer, and he wasn't from my memories of
visiting every summer and living with them for three years.
He would pick up his lunch in the burer rabbit

(03:24):
syrup pail, which you guys know nothing about. My mother.
My grandmother had packed it with his lunch and he
would grab a hole and he would walk up the
dirt road to the asphalt paid highway to catch a
truck to go to the cotton fields. So I guess

(03:47):
in it says he was a farmer, except he wasn't
farming for himself. My grandfather was a smart man. They
never had the opportunities. The roots of faith were Ame
African Methodists Episcopal, and if you know anything about the
Ame Church, you know that history began in Philadelphia when

(04:10):
suddenly the good Methodist decided that the African Americans could
no longer sit on the main floor with them, and
they had to sit in the balcony. And Richard Allen decided,
oh no, we will have our own theme, and the
Ame Church came into existence. Well, the small church in
the pasture not far from where my grandparents lived, White's Chapel,

(04:34):
named after my grandmother's family. Well, that pastor of that
white clap board church, sitting in the middle of the
pastor was I Kinlerant did not show up every Sunday.
And on the Sundays when she did not show up,
my grandfather ran the services. And now I don't remember

(04:56):
anything about those services and who paid attention to stuff
like that. But my uncle uncle Bud, I do remember him,
and did every southern family have an uncle Bud? But anyway,
I do remember him. It ain't somewhere in the corner

(05:18):
flunking on a guitar, not really strumming chords, binging, dou la,
do la, do remember me? Do lo do love? Do
remember me? Maybe someday I'll tell your uncle Bud's story.
But he was the baby of the family, all girls

(05:40):
except for Uncle Bud, and I'm sure they spoiled him.
And Uncle Bud at one time was married, but his
wife ran away and from that point forward he never
married again. My grandfather, I think he was irritated a
lot by Uncle Bud, thought he was lazy, and I
ever remember him having a job. He sold water melons.
They had a watermelon patch, and many a summer I

(06:03):
spent eating water melons on the front porch the garret,
as they called it, in the hot summer, slices of watermelon,
eating it down to the white rhine, juice drippling down
my arm. But anyway, my grandfather, I guess you would

(06:25):
call him overseerer. I don't know if there's a former title,
but he stood in the place of the pastor when
the pastor wasn't dead. I remember that the pastor was
a woman. I don't know if that was a thing
back then in the AAUM church. It must have been.
My grandfather, Yes, was smart. My grandmother just practical, being

(06:45):
bomed as they say. She was noted on the fences
as a washer woman, a washer woman, and she was
again remembering those times when I would visit every summer
when we lived with them for three years, and I
would go with her to Miss Willie's house, big white,

(07:07):
massive expensive house in the middle of a green pasture
that flowed all the way down to the little house
where the groundskeeper maybe he was a servant, Mister Justice
and his wife, missus Lizzie lived, and my grandmother would
go there and she would wash Miss Willie's clothes and

(07:28):
oil the whites and this big cast iron out in
the backyard, and take a board and swirl them around
and put the lie soap in them. And then would
take that board and lift it up and put it
into this would look like a washing machine, but it
was really the ringer, run it through the ringer, and
then hang those sheets on the clothes line. Yes, on

(07:50):
the nineteen forty cents is my grandmother was noted as
a washerwoman. And my aunt who I came to know
very bourge why lot of saidity was noted on that
nineteen forty census as a servant girl. But she got
away from that. She married and moved away and eventually

(08:14):
landed in California and became a supervisor at a naval
base over the accounting department, and was well known in
her church in the city. Yes, the Aam church. Her
roots stayed there, my mother's didn't, and we moved back

(08:35):
to the small town in which I was raised, where
I celebrated many a Juneteenth. My mother didn't have a car,
so we couldn't get across town to the Aami church,
but the Baptist church was just a two block walk away,
and that's how we became. That's Aami roots to Baptist

(08:56):
White's Chapel Am and that little village here my grandfather
had oversight over. And I remember walking across this bridge
over You couldn't really call it a creek, but I
guess it was like a big ditch and it needed
a wooden board for a bridge to walk across. And
walking across and walking up to the church. Those memories

(09:19):
flood and I think about them a lot, and I
wish that I had known to ask the questions that
I now know to ask, but I did not know.
And here's where it gets interesting. Though I celebrated Juneteenth,
I have memories of celebrating Juneteenth every nineteenth of June
in my Texas hometown that I was raised in from

(09:42):
the seventh grade. June teenth, I never knew, you, I
knew nothing about the history of Juneteenth, even though I
was raised in Texas. I'd later come to know that
it happened in Galveston. I knew that it was two

(10:05):
years before the slaves knew they were free, but I
kind of thought, but actually I don't know what I thought.
It just never occurred to me that it was solely
a Texas celebration or the time that I was growing up.
And I can remember visiting California, and I think I
was in my early twenties and amid some of my

(10:25):
sister's friends and I was there. Maybe I had already
moved to California, and nineteenth of June came up and
I asked, where are the June teeenth celebrations? And to
ask me what is June teenth? They had no clue.
This was in the seventies. But yes, we celebrated June

(10:47):
teenth every summer in Texas. Barbecue and kool aid, Red
kool aid. That was the flavor of red kool aid.
And I can remember driving across this bridge over a
man made lake in a little town where I was raised,
to what we call the beach. But it was just

(11:09):
that little patch of sandy land where all the black
kids would go and have fun and laugh and maybe barbecue,
body wick you just fun. Oh No, our beach was
not like the beach appropriated by the white families. But

(11:32):
we took that little reminds me of a gospel song.
Little becomes much when you place it in the master's hand.
We took that little and turned it into a lot,
a lot of fun, a lot of laughter, a lot
of just binging together. That was juneteeth to me. I

(11:53):
had no backstory to Juneteenth until I moved to California. No,
not until I moved to California, until California began to
dig into June tenth, and other states began to look
into June teenth and discovered it was a celebration of emancipation.
And yes, in the beginning, when I asked about Juneteenth,

(12:15):
people laughed at me and said, oh, y'all didn't know.
Y'all was still slaves for two years after you had
bit freed. And that part of the story is true,
But it was also a celebration of life, of living
beyond those times, having answer acestors who endured and who

(12:38):
persevered and kept it moving and kept hope alive and
got up every day and grabbed that beer rabbit syr
pale in that hole and walked up that dirt road
to be picked up by a truck to go to
the cotton field. Oh who every day grabbed a granddaughter
by a hand and walked up to Miss Willie's house,
this big, white, expansive hull and the green lawn that

(13:01):
slowed all the way down the hill to the house
where mister Justice and missus Lizzie leered, maybe caretakers of
the grounds and doing work for Miss Lizzie, maybe made
and caretaker, but getting up every Sunday and putting on
their Sunday best the best they could, the best they had.

(13:25):
My mother, my grandmother, pulling on this I don't even
know if you call it a wig, but it was
attached to elastic and she would pull it over her
head and then she would comb my hair over it
and it would be little curls in the back. It
is the best they could, and they persevered, and they
poured into their children and encouraged their children about perseverance

(13:49):
and resilience and courage and education. And so that's what
Juneteenth was. It wasn't just about the barbecue and the
red koolaide and if a June Teeth for me was
the pride of a people who had endured a lot
but still knew how to celebrate in spite of the

(14:12):
adversity that got them to that place. Now, June teenth,
I never knew you, but I've come to know you,
and I've come to embrace you, and I've come to
realize that it's all about family, friends, laughter, love of food.

(14:42):
Then read kool Aid. What I realized, that what I learned,
and what I now as I sit here on this night,