The annual Juneteenth celebration in DeKalb, Texas, was held this weekend.
A parade started everything off Saturday morning with the procession beginning at DeKalb City Park. After winding its way through town and along Texas Highway 82, the parade returned to the park where daylong festivities were planned.
The activities of the day at the park included plenty of barbecue beef, pork and goat along with cold drinks for everyone. Homemade ice cream cooled everyone down from the inside out.
There were coed softball games to watch and to play throughout the day. The camaraderie among those who attended the day's celebration included some seeing old friends, some seeing family.For the parade, several vehicles displayed magnetic signs specially made to honor those friends and family members who have passed and who were instrumental in the development and planning stages of the holiday in years gone by.
Parade entries included jazzed-up sports cars, tricked out trucks, luxury liners, motorcycles and horses. Oh, and one dog.
The sports cars put on quite a show in front of the viewing gallery on the highway.
Cue the revving, the screeching tires, the rubber melted to the road, the yeehaws and the hoorahs.
It was pleasant under the shade at the park for the picnic. Some of the equestrians hitched their horses to the large trees to grant them some shade as well.
But the center of attention was the pavilion with the chefs smoking their meats and cups of ice cream being served with cold drinks available as well.
Juneteenth celebrates the freeing of slaves in the United States. Then President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, but word of the proclamation was not received in Texas until June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Grainger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that the war had ended and the enslaved were declared free.
For the last 151 years, African-Americans in Texas have celebrated that historic day and have adopted the familiar term of Juneteenth. The holiday has grown in strength through the years and is becoming widely celebrated across the United States.
Besides the original reason for the festivities, the second-best part of the day was having the opportunity to visit with old friends, new friends and family members. DeKalb's annual celebration is one that is looked forward to by many in the community.