Juneteenth celebrated in Eatonton

Putnam County’s sizable Black community turned out in full force June 17, for the inaugural Juneteenth Parade and Festival, first on the streets of downtown Eatonton, then moving to the recently spruced-up Jimmy Davis Park.

Local police and fire department personnel began closing off the parade route shortly after 9:30 a.m. Saturday for the parade’s prompt 10 o’clock start.

By then, the streets were lined 3-to-5 people deep all along the downtown core of South and North Jefferson Avenues.

Happy parade goers waved enthusiastically while many participants tossed candy and handed out cardboard fans, beaded necklaces, and other small promotional items related to the many businesses and service organizations represented.

Local dignitaries including Eatonton Mayor John Reid and his wife, City Councilwoman Janie Reid, were prominently featured in the parade, as was Mothers Against Crime founder and president Georgia Benjamin-Smith, along with Putnam County Middle School’s back-to-back championship-winning girls’ basketball team, among others.

Juneteenth officially falls on June 19, the day in 1865 that Union Major General Gordan Granger officially declared in Galveston, Tex., that all of approximately 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas were granted freedom based on the Emancipation Proclamation signed into law two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln.

Officially, they represented the last of the country’s enslaved population to be freed and left to determine their own destinies.

Eventually, on Jan. 1, 1980, Texas became the first to officially declare Juneteenth a state holiday.

Georgia initially made Juneteenth an official state holiday in 2011 and it became the 12th official national holiday, signed into law June 18, 2021, by President Joe Biden, who noted it was the first new national holiday since 1986 when Martin Luther King Day was officially recognized. Juneteenth (June 19) joined New Year’s Day (Jan.1), Independence Day (July 4), Veterans Day (Nov.11), and Christmas Day (Dec.25), as one of just five date-specific federal holidays in the United States.

Once the parade ended, Eatonton’s Juneteenth party moved to nearby Jimmy Davis Park, where several dozen food and crafts vendors lined the perimeter of a freshly cut baseball field. Additionally, musicians entertained a friendly and positive-minded crowd, with representatives of all ages, from infants to the elderly, mingling and enjoying a typically warm Georgia summer Juneteenth day.