93-year-old veteran remembers celebrating Juneteenth
LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) – 93-year-old veteran Samuel Gatlin, a medic in Korea and the National Guard shares his memories of Juneteenth.
A young man in Logansport, Louisiana, his father and others would celebrate Juneteenth before it became recognized as a federal holiday.
“We lived in the country and the only thing I was associated with was farming. I started working in the fields at a very young age,” said Gatlin. He started at the age of 8 years old until 15 years old. He would work in the fields during the day and when school started, he would go to school. Then, afterward, he would have to go back to the field.
“In the fields back then, we had a lot of things to do,” he explained. “Start off chopping cotton. Then when we got through with that. Cotton got drawn and ready to be picked. We had to pick cotton. We didn't have any choice in what we wanted to do as individuals. We had to do it his [a white man they worked for] way because we were sharecropping.”
Gatlin adds, “The white man furnished everything but it wasn't back then at least we didn't consider it as being slavery, but that's what it amounted to because we couldn't do anything without going to the white man.”
He said they called Juneteenth the 19th of June and they only had one day to celebrate it.
“When we started farming our biggest goal was to have the crops laid by. Cotton getting ready to be picked but by Juneteenth if we haven’t got through with the farm and all we didn't take Juneteenth. We work right on through. That’s why it was so necessary for us to work hard and regularly and late to get things over with that way we could have the day 19th of June off,” said Gatlin. “Every day was a work day. So Juneteenth was a holiday in that order and we look forward to on the 19th of June there was always a barbecue somewhere; Community. It was a full day, but it doing what we as a race were free to do together. All the people in the community, Black would come together.”
Progress has been made as Juneteenth is now recognized as a federal holiday. Abram Freeman who is the founder and board member of the South West Louisiana Juneteenth Committee said, “For people of my culture, it is important to us as the 4th of July. The 4th of July celebrates the freedom of a nation. However, there was a large citizenry who was not free, and so the 4th of July did not have the same meaning for us as it does to the majority population. Juneteenth is the celebration of the freedom of a people and that's why it's important to us, similar to that of Cinco de Mayo.”
Freeman said a lot of people don't know about Juneteenth because it's been hidden from the history books.
“It is sad that generations upon generations of African Americans have not had their own history represented in the education system. For a lot of our kids, they think that you know, we just showed up during slavery and that's not true. Then in the next chapter, there is Martin Luther King. Then the next chapter, there's Michael Jackson. But there's a lot of stuff that happened in between there.”
He explained “It's important that we recognize several things. Number one is that President Lincoln initially wanted to free slaves, but his hands were tied by Congress. So during a civil war, the North was losing the war. It was horrible and so President Lincoln and his cabinet were trying to figure out a way to turn the tides. So he had in his reserve a lot of colored troops who were willing and ready to free the rest of the colored citizenry in this country.”
He said groups of the US Navy were called the Colored Troops. Over 4000 of them from up north came down and they came down to the western part of the country. Some became Buffalo Soldiers.
“The Buffalo Soldiers had a wonderful relationship with the Indians and kept the Indians from attacking some of the white settlers. Then you had the group of Navy, which for the colored troops, over 4000 who were sent to the border of Mexico to discourage Maximilian from attacking the US but on their way, they came to New Orleans to pick up in order, and that order was to free those coloreds who were in Texas,” said Freeman.
He continued, “The majority of Texas was in the southern part of Texas. So when the colored troops got off the boats and they bivouac around Galveston, they started posting that order all through Galveston and it wasn't that the African-Americans didn't know that they were free. They didn't believe they were free. They heard about it. They didn't believe it and many of the white plantation owners weren't willing to let them go. But when you have 4000 colored troops walking through town with guns, it was very easy to convince people that freedom had arrived.”
“We celebrate because, from the Revolutionary War on, African-Americans have spilled blood for this country, and by golly, it's about time we all celebrate that 30% group of this country who have given everything that we have to this country. All we're asking is that people celebrate with us.”
Here are the events happening with SWLA to celebrate Juneteenth.
“I would like to be able to see out in a crowd people from all different colors and races and nationalities and languages out there, fellowship and proving that what happened years ago in freeing African Americans has great benefits today. So remember, it's not a Black holiday, it's a U.S. holiday and U-S, us need to celebrate it,” concluded Freeman.