Juneteenth Jubilee

JUNETEENTH

JUBILEE History • Culture • Entertainment

JUNE 17 - JUNE 19, 2022 https://bit.ly/MVJuneteenthJubilee

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JUNETEENTH

JUBILEE A publication of the Vineyard Gazette Media Group

Publisher Jane Seagrave Production Director McKinley Sanders Contributing Writer Skip Finley Ad Production Jared Maciel, Jane McTeigue, McKinley Sanders Director of Sales & Marketing Skip Finley Sales Manager Frederica Carpenter Sales Team Carrie Blair, Garrett Burt, Alessandra Hagerty, Amy Kurth Marketing Consultant Kharma Finley-Wallace Business Manager Sarah Gifford

The Martha’s Vineyard Juneteenth Jubilee insert is published by the Vineyard Gazette Media Group, P.O. Box 66, Edgartown, MA 02539, vineyardgazette.com, and is distributed free on Martha’s Vineyard. Copyright 2022. No portion of this publication may be reprinted without the express written permission of the publisher. Every effort has been made to confirm the accuracy of the information in this publication, and the data is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed.

For advertising and editorial inquiries, contact publisher@mvgazette.com.

Jeanna Shepard

Gathering in Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs marked Juneteenth 2020.

WELCOME The Vineyard Gazette Media Group is proud to participate with many Island organizations in celebrating the newest federal holiday, Juneteenth National Independence Day, with a three-day weekend of activities.

Juneteenth Jubilee on Martha’s Vineyard was introduced in 2021 by Kahina Van Dyke, principal of Inkwell Haven, the owner of three Oak Bluffs guesthouses – the historically significant Narragansett House and Dunmere By the Sea, and Inkwell Beach House – as a celebration of freedom, hope and joy for all Americans.

This year, other Island businesses and organizations joined the celebration by creating their own Juneteenth Jubilee events, many of which are listed in this program guide. Special thanks are due Cape Cod Five, sponsor of our keynote speaker Dr. Cheryl LaRoche, the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, the Edgartown Yacht Club, Vineyard Preservation Trust, Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association, the Edgartown Board of Trade and the many other participants.

While most enslaved Africans arrived in America aboard ships, less well known is the role of seagoing vessels in enabling slaves to escape captivity.

This year, Juneteenth Jubilee offers Islanders the opportunity to learn more about this exciting new area of historical research, while celebrating Black history and culture, too.

ABOUT JUNETEENTH Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021 when President Biden signed a bill creating Juneteenth National Independence Day. Short for “June Nineteenth,” it marks the day in 1865 when slavery effectively ended in the United States, and has been celebrated by Black Americans ever since.

Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation legally abolished slavery, federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to take control of the state. On June 19, Union General Gordon Granger read General Order No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

The following year, former slaves in Texas organized the first of what became an annual celebration of “Jubilee Day,” which traditionally includes music, picnics, lectures and readings.

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MARTHA’S VINEYARD AND MARITIME ESCAPE TO FREEDOM

BY SKIP FINLEY Although slavery was not formally abolished in the United States until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Massachusetts was the first state in the new nation to address the injustice. And within the state, the island of Martha’s Vineyard can claim a long history of freedom and abolitionism.

Much has been recorded about the Underground Railroad, the land-based system that enabled an unknown number of former American slaves to escape bondage to the North and Canada. Less well known is another route of escape: by sea.

A landmark treatise and anthology, “Sailing to Freedom – Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad,” edited

by Dr. Timothy D. Walker, describes how the same maritime routes that brought ships of people to slavery in America also contributed to their escape. In her essay, Dr. Cheryl LaRoche writes, “On foot, an escapee might exert maximum physical effort to travel twenty-five miles, mostly at night if conditions were conducive. By water a fast ship could average nine miles an hour.” Every hour gained put more time between escapees and their pursuers.

Between 1728 and 1858, Martha’s Vineyard figured in the documented escapes of at least 10 former slaves who sought freedom aboard ships.

SLAVERY IN THE BAY STATE Men in Puritan-era Massachusetts bought, sold, and held enslaved Africans from the 1630s until slavery in the colony dissolved following the end of the American Revolution.

The first known record of enslaved Africans being imported into the state comes from a journal of the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In February 1638, a ship returned from Bermuda with cargo that included cotton, tobacco and

Sailing to Freedom - Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad Dr. Timothy Walker Of more than 100 slave narratives written before the end of the Civil War, more than 70 percent discuss the use of waterways and vessels for escape. Similarly, runaway slave advertisements refer to the threat of maritime escape. Though more prominent along the Atlantic Seaboard, these trends extend into the interior of the United States, where major river corridors and lakes on state or national borders provided means for escape. Ultimately, the use of water as a viable means of flight occurred in every slaveholding state in America.

“Negroes.” In 1641 the Massachusetts Bay Colony adopted a code of laws that made slavery legal for 142 more years.

The legal status of slavery in Massachusetts was codified in the Body of Liberties, a document guaranteeing civil rights to British colonists but allowing slavery when “taken in just wars, [or] as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us.”

A 1670 law made it legal for the children of enslaved women to be sold into bondage, and by 1680 the colony had laws restricting the movement of black people. As Massachusetts wasn’t well suited to plantation agriculture, families rarely held more than one or two people in bondage. But Puritan missionary John Eliot “lamented . . . with a bleeding and burning passion, that the English used their Negroes but as their Horses or the Oxen, and that so little care was taken about their immortal Souls.”

In 1783, as a result of a lawsuit brought on behalf of black whaler Prince Boston on Nantucket, Massachusetts courts declared that “the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct,” marking Massachusetts the first state in the union to outlaw slavery.

Courtesy Austin History Center

Musicians celebrating Juneteenth circa 1900.

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Historian Skip Finley is the author of Historic Tales of Oak Bluffs (2019) and Whaling Captains of Color – America’s First Meritocracy (2020).

TEN THAT ESCAPED BY SEA 1728 »

Enslaved “negro” Jethro stole a canoe in Kingston, RI to escape to Martha’s Vineyard.

1743 » The slave Esther, being transported from Boston

to North Carolina aboard the sloop Endeavor, escaped when the ship was docked in Edgartown Harbor overnight — with her feet bound to a crowbar and her hands tied behind her back. Esther’s story has received federal recognition from the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

1787 » Former slave John Saunders brought Methodism

to Martha’s Vineyard in 1787 – with his half-white wife Priscilla.

They were brought to the Island from Virginia by Captain Thomas Luce hidden beneath corn. A plaque dedicated to Saunders is on the Martha’s Vineyard African American Heritage Trail at the Pecoy Point Preserve where he preached to the ‘coloured’ and indigenous people.

1790

» Oak Bluffs character John Harry Monus John Peter Tobirus Peter Toskirus Peter Tubal Cain – Old Harry for short – deserted a ship in Vineyard Sound in 1790, escaping slavery and becoming a servant of Ichabod Norton, one of the wealthiest people on the Island.

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The Falmouth Historical Society has this story of an unnamed female runaway slave: “With his ship moored at the town wharf, a slaveowner took his female slave to be registered at the Falmouth Post Office. When he left the girl at the office to take care of other business, several women asked the girl if she wanted to stay in Falmouth. She agreed and was hidden among barrels in the basement of the building.

When the businessman returned, the slave was nowhere to be found. His ship was set to leave and he did so without her.” The girl was taken into a Black family in Falmouth, and eventually married Joseph Ray, a boatman responsible for carrying the mail from Falmouth to Martha’s Vineyard.

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plantation and was hidden by crewmen on a ship carrying lumber that stopped on Martha’s Vineyard. The captain discovered Jones and shared the news with the sheriff. Warned by the crew, Jones fled and hid out for almost a week. Beulah Salisbury Vanderhoop and others from Gay Head (Aquinnah) helped him escape.

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1858

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The bark Franklin arrived at Holmes Harbor en route to Maine on September 12 with a slave who had hidden in the hold. Described as 25-30 years old, the Vineyard Gazette reported that he took a boat ashore that night to escape.

The Vineyard Gazette reported on May 11 that two or three fugitive slaves arrived in Edgartown, aided by a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Chappaquiddick, described as a “colored resident,” who helped them to New Bedford.

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Josiah Henson was an author, abolitionist, and minister born into slavery in Maryland. His escape in 1830 was assisted by a ship captain who agreed to transport the Henson family to Buffalo, New York where they crossed the river into Canada and where Henson founded a settlement and school for other fugitive slaves. Henson is believed to have inspired the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He visited Martha’s Vineyard and spoke at the Tabernacle in the Camp Ground in 1858.

1854

Harry Seymour

Painting of Esther, Fugitive Slave.

“Edgar Jones” (aka Randall Burton/Edinbur Randall/John Mason) escaped from a South Carolina

Fugitive slave Philip Smith stowed away on the William Purrington from North Carolina, bound for Boston.

Discovered after a few days at sea, Smith was housed in the hold with sickening odors of the turpentine being transported.

Due to bad weather the ship docked at Holmes Hole on Martha’s Vineyard where Smith was confined. Later, on the way to Boston the ship ran aground and he made his escape.

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FRIDAY, JUNE 17 JUBILEE, JUNETEENTH, AND THE THIRTEENTH | 5:00 pm Union Chapel, Oak Bluffs SPECIAL FILM SCREENING & DISCUSSION Leon Wilson, CEO, Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket Dr. Kerri Greenidge, Professor of Race, Colonialism and Diaspora at Tufts University Presented by Union Chapel Education and Cultural Institute and Museum of African American History

SATURDAY, JUNE 18 CELEBRATE JUNETEENTH AT MARTHA’S VINEYARD MUSEUM | 10:00 am - 1:00 pm Martha’s Vineyard Museum, Vineyard Haven Tickets: $50

FREEDOM BY SEA | 10:00 am Keynote Speaker: Dr. Cheryl LaRoche, author of Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance Presented by Cape Cod Five

ENVISIONING EMANCIPATION | 11:00 am Barbara Krauthamer, co-author of Envisioning Emancipation - Black Americans and the End of Slavery

STEPPING STONE TO FREEDOM: MARTHA’S VINEYARD AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD 12:00 pm Bow Van Riper, Martha’s Vineyard Museum Research Librarian BOOK READING | 10:30 am Edgartown Library, Edgartown A GIRL OF COLOR

by Author Vikki Young Moderated by Diane Carr Sponsored by Hob Knob Inn & Rosewater

THE LITTLE INKWELL GIRL

by Author Nichole J. Edmonds Reading & Signing

OAK BLUFFS HARBORFEST | All Day Sponsored by the Oak Bluffs Association JUNETEENTH JUBILEE CREATIVE FESTIVAL 2022 | 4:00 pm - 10:00 pm The Tabernacle, Oak Bluffs Featuring: Nikole Hannah- Jones, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist. Lynn Whitfield,

Internationally Acclaimed Actress. Grace Gibson, Multi-disciplinary Artist.

Sean McMahon & Katie Mahew, Musicians. Ismail Samad, Culinary Provocateur

Sponsored by Inkwell Haven, Oak Bluffs 10

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SUNDAY, JUNE 19 JUNETEENTH GOSPEL BRUNCH | 9:30 am AND A DOCKSIDE TOUR ABOARD THE SHENANDOAH Edgartown Yacht Club, Edgartown Tickets: $65

Special Gospel Performance by Athene Wilson Sponsored by the Vineyard Gazette, Edgartown Yacht Club and FUEL

THE STORIES OF THE ENSLAVED | 11:00 am Memorial Wharf, Edgartown MV African American Heritage Trail co-founders Elaine Weintraub and Carrie Tankard tell the stories of the slaves Esther and Nancy Michael. Martha’s Vineyard NAACP President Arthur Hardy Doubleday will join.

Sponsored by Martha’s Vineyard magazine, MV African American Heritage Trail, and Martha’s Vineyard NAACP FINDING STORIES OF FREEDOM | 11:30 am The Carnegie, Edgartown Tickets: $50 Featuring: Lee Blake, Director, New Bedford Historical Society; Skip Finley, Author/Historian; Bonnie Stacy, Chief Curator, Martha’s Vineyard Museum; Hilary Wallcox, Librarian, Vineyard Gazette, and manager of The Time Machine; Michelle Moon, author and creative museum professional.

Sponsored by the Vineyard Gazette and Vineyard Preservation Trust Presenting Sponsor: Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce BOOK READING & SIGNING | 11:00 am Rosewater Market, Edgartown A GIRL OF COLOR | 11:00 am

by Author Vikki Young Moderated by Julia Tarka Sponsored by Hob Knob Inn & Rosewater DEDICATION CEREMONY OF THE DUNMERE HOUSE Dunmere by the Sea, Oak Bluffs Join in for the official Dedication Ceremony of the Dunmere House (once in the Green Book) as a site on the Martha’s Vineyard African American Heritage Trail Sponsored by Inkwell Haven and MV African American Heritage Trail

Schedule updates will be posted at https://bit.ly/MVJuneteenthJubilee JUNETEENTH JUBILEE

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