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PATRICKS FEED & SEED
Covington residents worked for years to gain Juneteenth holiday
By TOM SPIGOLON
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tspigolon@covnews.com In 2021, Newton County celebrated Juneteenth for the first time as a sanctioned local holiday. with a parade and festival at Covington’s Legion Field.
In 2022, it was an even bigger celebration that featured a parade with more than 60 entries. It was a sign that the event which celebrates the official ending of slavery is going to become a mainstay in Covington.
From the event’s inception, the demand for it has been huge. Longtime local parade organizer Terri James said last year’s event was originally scheduled elsewhere, but was moved to Legion Field on Mill Street after years at other locations because of the number and size of events scheduled.
James said she had been willing to put in the volunteer hours over the course of a decade to organize the event because of the importance of what the holiday represents.
“This is something all people need to know about,” she said at the time.
James said she first learned of the then-little-known observance from a cousin in Louisiana when James was still employed in the telecommunications industry.
After retiring, she worked to spread the word about the observance of the event that marked the de facto ending of slavery of Black people in the U.S.
“I found out people had never heard about it,” James said.
Juneteenth’s origins date to 1865 in Texas.
President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 ordered an end to slavery but the order could not be implemented in parts of the U.S. still under Confederate control.
Texas was the most western Confederate state during the war. It remained in Rebel hands until June 19, 1865, when about 2,000 Union troops arrived at Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced that Lincoln’s executive
