Escapes
JUNE 2021 46
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SIX SENSES, HEIGHTENED
NATIONAL CELEBRATION OF FREEDOM AT ALLEN
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LIBERATION BEACH
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Photo courtesy of the artist, Reginald C. Adams.
JUNETEENTH
Absolute Equality for All
THE JUNETEENTH LEGACY PROJECT’S NEW MURAL IN DOWNTOWN GALVESTON PURSUES A NATIONWIDE CELEBRATION OF FREEDOM
“M
y grandfather always told me that it wasn’t a piece of paper that freed the enslaved people of Texas,” a childhood friend of Sam Collins’ grandmother, Attorney Fay Williams, once told him. “It was the men with the guns.” Born in Galveston, raised in Hitchcock, Collins grew up celebrating Juneteenth with his family. He knew the story—how General Gordon Granger came into Galveston with his troops, two and a half years after Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, to announce and enforce General Order No. 3: “All slaves are free.” “There are all these myths around Juneteenth, around why the slaves of Texas got the news so late,” said Collins. “People say the messenger got killed, things like that. No, the news was not late. It was in the newspapers. In Texas, 46
By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot there was never any intent to abide by the law, to free their slaves. If those soldiers hadn’t shown up, they never would have stopped.” There is a part of the story that Collins never knew, though, until fairly recently. Those men with the guns? They looked like him. “I knew that there were Black soldiers who helped win the Civil War,” he said. “But no one told us that seventy five percent of the forces that came into Texas were Black soldiers.” According to an 1866 report by General Phillip Sheridan, General Gordon Granger was accompanied by 6,500 white soldiers and 19,768 United States Colored Troops on his mission to free the last of the United States of America’s enslaved. “That part of the story never gets told, even by people who value Juneteenth,” he said. “Those men were true freedom fighters, true patriots.” A financial advisor by trade, Collins
J U N E 2 1 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
has been active in the preservation community for years, working with historical organizations that include the Hitchcock Heritage Society, the Galveston Historical Foundation, the Galveston County Historical Commission, the Texas Historical Commission, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation—of which he currently serves as a board member. In all of his endeavors, Collins has championed efforts to tell the full story, to challenge the accepted narratives of our history insofar as to encourage more nuanced understandings of where we come from—especially when it comes to the history of slavery. Hoping to gain more recognition of Juneteenth holiday’s significance, in 2012 Collins worked to raise funds, in collaboration with the Galveston Historical Foundation, to create a historical marker at the corner of 22nd Street and The Strand in downtown
Galveston—the former site of the Union Army headquarters, and where General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3. The marker was placed in June 2014. Six years later, in the wake of the nationwide George Floyd protests of 2020 and the accompanying rise of conversations around race, history, and Juneteenth itself—Collins decided to go one step further. In November of 2020, he and Juneteenth Legacy Project Committee Co-chair Sheridan Lorenz established the Juneteenth Legacy Project (J19LP) nonprofit, introduced with the unveiling of a five thousand square foot art installation titled “Absolute Equality”. Situated on the same corner as the historical marker, at the site considered “the heart of Juneteenth,” the mural can’t be missed. While Collins and I talked in front of it, pedestrians—locals and weekend visitors alike—stopped every
