On June 19th, 1865, General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas to announce General Order No. 3 that ended slavery in Texas.
“The people are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and two months after the Civil War, the sudden announcement that ended the horrors of slavery in Texas—the 13th Amendment passed in December 1865 officially abolished slavery—was a day that every Black person would remember as a day of jubilee.
The following year, Black folks in Galveston and across Texas commemorated the event. So important in fact, they eventually created their own word, “Juneteenth,” to mark that occasion. Juneteenth meant everything. It was their day.
The day.
Prayer, parades, picnics, and the national pastime permeated these celebrations. Facing increasing white resentment, Juneteenth was used to strengthen the bond of the Black community. They ate well (high on the hog), drank red soda, listened to local orators and church leaders read the Emancipation Proclamation and preached about the future of the race.
At a time when whites questioned Black folks’ ability to survive in freedom, Juneteenth suggested otherwise. The parades were meant for white people to see. To let them hear the words of Abraham Lincoln and remind them Black people were indeed free. Let them see Black women dressed as “lady liberty,” to remind them of promises unkept. To make them watch Black soldiers leading the parade, to remind them of the sacrifices made for the nation.
And then there was baseball.
One could not attend a Juneteenth without baseball. In a south that increasingly tried to limit Black freedom, baseball became a symbol of mobility and autonomy in a Jim Crow Texas. Starting in the early 1870s, baseball was almost certain to be a center piece at every Juneteenth.
Growing in national popularity and social significance after the Civil War, baseball presented Black people with an opportunity to prove their toughness, skills, and merit for first-class citizenship. Playing on the same field as a white person would assume equality. Besting him in competition would prove superiority.
Yet in the south, racist white politicians and their Jim Crow laws tried their best to strip the importance from the game. They believed that if baseball was segregated, it could never prove equality. But that color line never stopped Black people from playing. Baseball quickly became a community game large and important enough to be a key cog in a celebration of emancipation.
Black Baseball Power
At first, these Juneteenth games just constituted fun community competition. A respite for residents from their daily lives.
“The negro population celebrated the anniversary of their emancipation today in grand style,” read a local report in Bastrop, TX in 1883. “Nearly all the negroes in the county were here. They had a picnic and a game of baseball about a mile from town.”[1]
But as the game continued to grow in the Black community, and the Juneteenth festivals became more prominent, to the point where most Black Texans insisted on having Juneteenth as a holiday regardless of what their employer said, these games turned into full out competition where a community’s best nine traveled to an opponent’s home turf.
Seemingly every city or town that had a large enough Black male population to support a Black nine fielded had a team. In 1928, the local white press in Corsicana reported, “An Emancipation program will be held at the Municipal ballpark June 19. A big barbecue will precede the baseball game between the Black Oilers and the Greenville Oil burners at 4 o’clock.”
To ensure everyone could attend, special railroad rates were effected on the Southern Pacific.[2]
In a Jim Crow society, baseball gave these Black Texans a sense of autonomy. They formed their own teams such as the Greenville Oil Burners, Austin’s Black Pioneers, the Lubbock Hubbers, San Antonio Bronchos, Texas City Tigers, the Port Arthur White Sox, and the Black Buffs of Houston. On a number of occasions, they formed their own leagues, like the Texas Colored League, which began play in 1920, the same year as the famed Negro National League.
The organization and scheduling of games, the traveling and claiming of public spaces for their own entertainment allowed these Black men to gain a since of control over their lives that white southern racism tried to deny them. In short, even in segregation, baseball was freedom and there was no better day than to play “America’s game” on Juneteenth.
Black teams outside of Texas soon took note of the economic opportunities that Juneteenth represented. Starting in the 1930s, the Memphis Red Sox, made sure to add Juneteenth on their schedule. Owned by Dr. J.B. Martin and W.S. Martin, the Martins and the Memphis Red Sox represented a Booker T. Washingtonian ideology of self-help and economic uplift for the Black community.
There was no greater symbol of this then the fact they owned their own stadium, a rarity for Black ball. Yet they understood the importance of Juneteenth and baseball and took their team on the road to get what was no doubt one of their best money-making opportunities. They scheduled Negro League opponents like the Kansas City Monarchs, Chicago American Giants, and the Birmingham Barons in Texas on Juneteenth. One year it could be Waco, another Longview, and another Paris. They went where the money was. The Memphis Red Sox, in fact, played their last Juneteenth game in 1959, the same season the franchise folded.
What happened to the Memphis Red Sox happened to all Black teams.
Integration in Major League Baseball and their southern minor league affiliates meant Black players could no longer, or would no longer, form their own teams. In an era where integration was the ultimate goal, many Black fans opted to watch integrated baseball. Once a staple of every celebration, the dearth of Black players meant a Black baseball game was no longer sustainable at this Black holiday.
Integration killed Black ball, but let’s hope it does not kill Juneteenth.
Now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, let’s hope that it does not lose its Blackness and its importance to a community that looks to the day as a way to celebrate and commemorate on their own terms.
[1] “Emancipation Celebration,” Dallas Daily Herald, June 20, 1883.
[2] “Big Celebration is Planned Here for the Nineteenth,” Corsicana Daily Sun, June 12, 1928.
