An Introduction to Brenham's Emancipation Celebrations, 1878-1923

     This is an article I put together several years ago after being amazed with the amount of information on the Emancipation Celebrations in Brenham newspapers.   Interesting enough in its own right, the next post will present transcripts of the various articles used to compose this article, to give a sense of the volume of material that went into this article.  

     Many of the people mentioned in this article and the newspaper transcriptions are also buried in Camptown Cemetery, which was the original impetus for the article.  It is yet another example of how the cemetery is an focal point for understanding life in in Camptown during this time.  Hopefully it will serve as yet another example of how cemeteries are not just where dead people go, but where people who have lived are. 

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An Introduction to
Brenham’s Emancipation Celebrations

1878-1923

by

Charles Swenson

In a distant corner of Camptown Cemetery the tombstone of Josephine Yancy lays collapsing in a gully next to a railway line.  It was covered in a canebrake until the cemetery was cleared in 2014, found next to the graves of her parents, Ben and Fannie, who had to bear the terrible burden of burying their only child.  She was far too young when she died in August of 1903, not yet 29 years of age.  Little is known about her, but three things are clear from Brenham newspaper accounts in 1896.  In March she gave a vocal duet at the Canton Excelsior Club at Lou Clark’s hall in Camptown.  A few months later she presented a paper for the Union Program at the Mount Rose Baptist Church, a hundred yards or so from her final resting place.  And in June of that year, at the same church, Miss Josephine Yancy  was nominated to become a Goddess.

Josephine wasn’t elected the Goddess of Liberty for the emancipation celebration that year, but she was one of many people buried in Camptown whose life is connected to these yearly observances.  Her father had been sworn in as one of the nine men specially selected as a policeman for the two day celebration two years earlier.  Asa Rippetoe was an assistant grand marshal of the parade in 1878.  Waterman Bynum’s daughter Mattie was also a candidate for Goddess of Liberty in 1885.  In 1884 Felix Whittaker’s father had a float in the parade decorated as “a complete blacksmith shop in full working order, with the mottoes, ‘We live by honest toil’ and ‘Patronize home industries.’”  Wylie Hubert entered a horse in a race at the Fairgrounds during the celebration there in 1894.  Frank Hubert served as  treasurer for the most widely advertised commemoration, held at Chauncey Williamson’s park in 1922.

(Brenham Daily Banner Press, June 8, 1922 p4)

Emancipation celebrations played an important role in Brenham’s black community in the late 19th and early 20th century.  It not only commemorated the freeing of slaves but was a chance for family and friends from around the state to gather together, socialize and relax for a two day holiday free from their daily labors and full of entertainments.  A study of contemporary newspaper accounts gives us not only a surprisingly broad understanding of how this holiday was celebrated but an insight into the black community in Brenham and Washington County as well.  The large number of articles on the subject which exist for the period of 1878 to 1923, as well as the span of time they cover, present a useful tool for investigating the evolving face of black history during this time period.  

“The plows are still in the fields.  Cooks have abandoned the kitchens.  Industries that are handled by colored labor are silent for the two days, having realized the futility of trying to run, have generously closed up and granted them the two days holiday”  (Brenham Evening Press, June 19, 1908, p1)

The Daily Banner reported in May of 1878 on a black committee’s plans for a emancipation day celebrations to be held “in the grove at the head of Hog Branch,” as well as the first intimation of the ongoing “disagreement among the committeemen” that was to continue throughout the years.  There were often two celebrations going on in Brenham, as well as smaller celebrations in other communities throughout Washington County.  The Brenham celebrations were often held at the “old fair grounds,” although later they were also held at a park in Wilkins’ Addition which was later incorporated into “Colored Firemen’s Park.” Stockbridge’s pasture or park was also the location of celebrations in Brenham.  In the 1920s, celebrations were also held at Chauncey S. Williamson’s Park, advertised as having “...a large Pavilion, Two-Story Hall, Stationary Stands, large Trees for shade and Electric Lights.  Come one, Come all!  Everyone is welcome in this Colored Park,which is owned by one colored man.”  1905 had even more separate celebrations, “one at Oak Grove Park, one mile east of Brenham on the Independence road (a commonly used location), one near Mrs. Dawson’s Sanitarium, given by ex-slaves,” one at “Hyde Park by the colored Hook and Ladder Company” (this seems to have been the Wilkins’ Addition park.)  Some of the celebrations were free, while others charge admission from 10 cents to 25 cents.  

The emancipation celebration was always two days long, generally on the 19th and 20th.  If one of these days fell on a Sunday, the dates for the festivities were moved either forward or backward to avoid conflicting with church services.  One emancipation celebration, however, was held by the Washington County Ex-Slaves Association at Stockbridges on October 1 in 1896, though it is not clear why this date was chosen. It was often commented that whites would have to cook their own meals and work in the fields was halted, as it was expected that during the celebrations blacks were to be free of their daily labors.

The celebrations in Brenham were well attended by other communities, including Chappell Hill, Hempstead, Navasota, Austin, Independence, William Penn, Gay Hill, Whitman, Kenney, Caldwell, Burton, Carmine, Sommerville, Temple, Bellville, Giddings, Orange, and Houston.  The influx of visitors for from distant communities was swelled by reduced railway rates during the the days surrounding the celebrations.  As early as the 1880s crowds were from two to three thousand, and by 1914 the crowd at the celebrations were estimated to be as high as six thousand.  This effect of such large crowds was not lost on the white population, with newspaper accounts not only mentioning the loss of cooks for many white families but the economic benefits of such large crowds on the local economy.  

Preparations for the celebrations began months beforehand.  The nomination and elections of a Goddess of Liberty were an important element of the celebrations.  Tickets were sold for the various candidates to raise money for the organizing committees.  The candidates were not only elected to serve as a feminine figurehead of the liberty recently won, much as the Goddess of Liberty had served as a symbol of freedom since the early days of the Texas Republic, but she was also to deliver speeches at the opening of the emancipation celebrations as well.  These elections were often quite lengthy and elaborate affairs themselves.

“The colored people closed the polls for the election of a goddess of liberty for their emancipation celebration at 11 o’clock on Saturday night at the Mount Rose Baptist church.  Miss Esther Johnson, daughter of Rev. Mose Johnson, was declared elected, after which 300 guests, headed by Randle’s brass band went to Henry McAdoo’s residence to partake of refreshments prepared by the committee.  They then went to the residence of the goddess of liberty about 12:30 a.m., and tendered her a serenade.  An address was delivered by J.H. Clinton, which was responded to.” (Brenham Daily Banner, June 12, 1889 p3)

The celebrations were usually started with a parade through downtown Brenham, or two when separate celebrations were being held.  The parades were typically led by

a grand marshal “wreathed in gorgeous silk sashes of emerald and crimson,” followed by a brass band.  Next would be that year’s elected Goddess of Liberty in a carriage covered in lace and led by six white horses,  accompanied by her maids of honor and flower girls, followed by the various orators who were to deliver their speeches at that day’s festivities.

Then came the floats, which were ranged from the mundane to quite elaborate.  Aside from Felix Whittakers working blacksmith shop, these covered a wide range of themes and topics.  These included “a children’s float decorated in the National colors, with swings suspended from the canopy, in which little children were swinging,” “a choir singing sacred songs,” various community groups, “a representation of Ransom’s tonsorial parlor.” “a juvenile fire company with a boat on a truck,” and “an ox wagon load of imitation cotton.”  In 1897 there was even a float representing racoon hunting, on which “a good sized tree had been transplanted, and amid its spreading branches a festive coon disported in apparent satisfaction, despite the fact that he had been shackled in freedom’s name.  At the root of the tree a veteran coon dog bayed deeped mouthed defiance to the treed coon and a lot of small boys with sticks and horns and other implements of noisy warfare added their full quota to the din.” The parades would also be accompanied by the Brenham Blues colored militia unit, Camptown’s  Hook and Ladder Company No.2, uniformed baseball teams, bicyclists and various other hangers on the way to the grounds where the celebrations were to be held.  

The local colored lodges and societies, including the Camptown Mutual Aid Benevolent Society, the Masons, the Ladie’s General Missionary Society, Ladies Aid Society, Missionary Building society, the Draymen’s Club No. 1, the Band of Progress, Grand United Order Odd Fellows, order of the Seven Stars of Consolidation, the Sons and Daughters of Zion and the Peculiar Sevens.  Many of these social groups played a role in organizing the celebrations as well as participating in the parades.

(Brenham Daily Banner Press, June 8, 1918, p2)

The celebrations were accompanied by speeches, sometimes with responses by that years Goddess of Liberty.  The speeches were often given by white community leaders as well as black, and the more accomplished black speakers would in time become in demand at other emancipation ceremonies.  Although there is no record of the content of these speeches, there does exist portions of a speech delivered by J.D. Bushell, the orator of the day at the the 1917 emancipation celebration at Chauncey Williamson’s park.  This speech  also given at Williamson's park two months earlier as the United States was just entering into the Great War.  Bushell, who was not only the principal of the Brenham Normal and Industrial college but a veteran of the Spanish American War and had charged up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders.  The speech, as quoted by the Brenham Daily Banner-Press of April 16, 1917, gives a sense of Bushell’s power as a speaker.

“...These ties are ties of blood, and may be seen upon battlefields, on southern plantations, in the home and in the forest. We made the crops, tilled the fields, felled the forests and did the primary, the fundamental, the strenuous labor for a period of more than two hundred years.

‘Our hands have not grown weary.  The same arms of iron, and fingers of steel that tilled the fields when we were not citizens, are doubly ready to do now that we are part and parcel of this great nation.  The man who walks behind the plow, who sits upon the reaper, who begins at early dawn and labors till the purple twilight deepens into night, is as much a soldier as the man who stands by his guns.  While our brethren are in the field, be they white or be they black, let the rest of us be making it possible for them to stay in the field until they shall have wrested from the crown of autocracy the incubus of human authority.

“There was never a war in the United States to free slaves.  The North has never had any more love for negroes than the South.  Slavery was not a Southern institution, but an American institution.  The Emancipation Proclamation was not issued to free the slaves, but it was issued as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing rebellion, and was used as a military necessity.  Mr. Lincoln clearly and distinctly stated in his first inaugural address delivered March 4, 1861, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.  I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and have no inclination to do so.”  While the North and the South were engaged in a war between themselves, making determined efforts for good government the gates flew open and the negro slave walked out and he has been walking ever since.  It is in the South where he was held as a slave that the negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world.  The South has never desired to re-enslave the negro, but it has helped, like the North, to Christianize and educate him.

“Our emancipation was not an accident, but a result.  It was the culmination of the working out by the mighty forces of faith and prayer through two hundred and fifty years of the proposition that “All men are created equal, and are of right and ought to be free.”  It was not the triumph of a system, nor of the North over the South.  When freedom tore the azure robe of night and set the stars in glory over the camps of four million slaves, it was the result of the well-defined and determined efforts of men and women North and South, many of whom were the descendants of Puritans and Huguenots, who, themselves had felt the fires of persecution and were wedded to liberty.

“Negro blood forms a part of the red in every stripe in “Old Glory.”  We have rendered valuable services in the nineteen wars of the United States, from the Revolution in 1775 to Carrizal where negro troopers went singing to their death.  If anywhere their bravery and valor are questioned, when they have been called upon to defend their country, go to San Juan Hill.  Ask the bleeding earth that drank their blood!  And if the rocks could find a tongue, they would tell you that negro troopers saved the day for American, by marching to the old Block House midst shot and shell, “while horse and hero fell.”  They routed the Spaniards with victory perched upon their banners and while the band played, “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” negro soldiers seized the artillery, turned it upon the fleeing Spaniards, and through their brave and heroic deeds, wrote their names in blood upon the records of military triumphs and scored a decisive victory for America.

“Every member of the race stands ready now to serve the country’s needs.  Let it be remembered that the man with the hoe is as much a factor in this contest as the man with the sword.  Every one is not fitted for service at the front.  Let everyone serve where he is best fitted, and in this we serve not only our country, but we serve humanity and God.

“This is no time for quibbling or shuffling.  The constitution of the United States is the expression, the highest expression of the organic law of our land.  That law gave us the elective franchise and we are citizens.”

In addition to the speeches, there were a number of various amusements available at the ceremonies.  There were horse races, shooting contest, colored military company drills, fiddler’s contests, mule riding, tournaments and  stock shows. Children could “join in a potato race, and egg race, running and hopping abstracts and many other such contests.”  There were many other contests as well, such as one for “the lady that proves herself to be the most talkative and entertaining,” prettiest woman and ugliest man,  best needlework, neatest dressed woman, best quilt, best oil painting, best recitation, best essay, best jubilee singing, best lady rifle shot, best milk cow, best bicycle rider, best cotton, best corn, fastest trotting horse and best decorated float.  Prizes included cash, hats, scarfs, rockers, painting, items of jewelry, vases, boxes of candy or cigars, and even sacks of flour.

Baseball was a big event during the celebrations.  Local teams, such as the Lee, the Famous, the Strikers of Camptown and the Lone Star of Watrousville played matches not only with each other, but with teams from Navasota, Hempstead, Beaumont, Galveston, Bryan, Bellville, and Austin.

Concessions were sold at stands that had been sold to the highest bidder prior to the celebrations, for categories such as saloon, chile, tamales, ice cream, confectionary, restaurant, shooting gallery, bootblack, barbecue pit, weinerwurst, lemonade, milk shake, “blue rock,”  dancing, “cane stand and doll baby,” and hobby horses.  Barbecue dinners were common at some of the smaller celebrations, where they were usually provided free.  Alcohol was generally present, especially at the larger gatherings,

Music played a large part in the celebrations, starting with the parades all the way through the Grand Balls given at night.  There were usually one or more local bands, such as Prof. Foss’ Brass Band, Emmanuel Taylor’s Lone Star Band (which earned $90 for the celebrations in 1900), Jerry Randle’s Cottonpatch Band, the Zobo Band (directed by Mrs. Estella Lindsey), the Twentieth Century Quartette and  Gus Hopkin’s Band.  The Brenham Brass Band, under the leadership of Prof. C.P. Hicks, even composed special music for the occasion, such as the “Emancipation Quadrille” and “Out of Bondage Waltz.”  Out town bands included the Seaport Band of Galveston and the W.H. Hawkins Band of San Antonio, with Sid C. Isles’ Ragtime Band from Houston being especially favored in later years.  An account of a musical contest between the Hawkins and Isles bands is found in a 1938 copy of Down Beat Magazine...

“Here’s an invitation to a carving contest that took place ‘way back in the ‘teens on the 19th of June in Brenham, Tex.  The occasion was the yearly celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves, and every mother’s son was really ready  to hear a battle of the music between the two best Colored bands in Texas  (A vote of thanks to Ray R. Hone, Jr., the  well-known record collector, for digging this dope.)

The line-up was as follows: W.H. Hawkin’s Brass Band, the pride of San Antonio, was bucking Sid Isles’ Ragtime Band from Houston.  And this man Sid Isles blew a hot horn that had echoed all over Texas.  The boys from Houston were sold on Sid, and packed the excursion train to the roof on the trip to Brenham.  Excursion trains were puffing in everywhere, but they calculated that there were over over a thousand Sid Isles fans from Houston alone.  The Hawkins Brass Band was unafraid.  They played strictly legit usually, the regulation stuff, for clubs, lodges, and city functions.  Besides Hawkins himself had composed that “March Tanforn.”  But they did have a solid cornetist, who could get off if he had the chance, named George Washington Smith.

Well, the final decision was one of those things.  The newspaper men had organized the battle, and they voted for the Hawkins Brass Band, because they played a legit overture.  But the crowd went the other wy.  And the most disappointed cat was George Washington Smith, not because he wasn’t allowed to get off, but because he wished he was playing with the Sid Isles band, that didn’t “pay no mind” to music reading.  George knew the real thing when he heard it and lost no time starting a real band of his own.”

( M.W. Stearns, ‘George Washington Smith Rocks Cradle of Jazz, Two Years Older Than Jelly-Roll He Carved Regulation Cats in Texas,’ Down Beat, April 1938, vol. 5, No. 4, page 13, columns 1-4 (found at http://www.doctorjazz.co.uk/page10bc.html )

Despite the differences, in music venues and otherwise, the similarities between Brenham’s annual Maifest and the emancipation celebrations were often noted.  “(T)he colored people pattern their  celebration a good deal after the manner of the white have their Maifest, save that a Goddess of Liberty takes the place of a May Queen”  (Brenham Evening Press, June 19, 1908 p1),  even though it was recognized that best special railway fares for Maifest were not as good as those the emancipation committees arranged for their celebration and at times drew a much larger crowd.  Just as the Maifest is held at the Firemen’s Park, the emancipation celebrations were often held at the Colored Firemen’s Park, and many of the floats that had been used in the Maifest procession were later used in the Juneteenth parades.  

The local newspaper accounts compiled below are limited in their temporal scope by what is readily available at the Portal to Texas History site hosted by the University of North Texas.  As such do not give much of a clue as to what eventually happened to the emancipation celebrations in Brenham after 1923, although it seems to have gone the way of so much of black history in Brenham.   It would be easy to guess that ominous racial prejudices and animosity might be at play, especially given the some of the openly derogatory comments made in the newspaper accounts, though the large number of supportive reports should also be taken into consideration.  

“However there is one ironic note about Emancipation Day that had deeper historic echoes in the historic record.  It was on June 19, 1891 that the Texas separate coach law of was go into effect, a seemingly odd choice for any law to come into effect, but especially this one.  “Today is the last day our colored friends can claim the social privilege of occupying the same coach or even the same seat with their white friends on the railway lines of Texas.  The separate coach law goes into effect tomorrow, and as the colored people are rushing about to the most accessible points to celebrate the 26th anniversary of their emancipation the change will be particularly noticeable and as the Banner has previously remarked will seem like the irony of fate that it should have gone into effect on this particular day. But this is best, and while there may be some recalcitrant colored individuals who oppose the law and will perhaps not accept it with good grace, it will be enforced.  The colored people will be furnished equal accommodation with the whites but they will ride in the same coach no more.”  (Brenham Weekly Banner, June 18, 1891, p8)

“It is a coincidence worth of note that on the day when the colored people of Texas will all be celebrating the anniversary of their emancipation, going on excursions and etc., they will be quietly ordered out of the coach with with white people into coaches prepared for them, for the separate coach law goes into effect on that day.  There is no doubt that this law was one of the best for all the people of Texas that was enacted by the last Legislature.”  (Brenham Daily Banner, May 26, 1891, p1)

This was one of the many separate coach laws that were proliferating throughout the country at the time, leading ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court “separate but equal” ruling in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896.  This was one of the legal precedents that helped solidify Jim Crow laws throughout the next 60 years, which certainly were separate if not quite so equal.  As surely as the directive issued by General Gordon Granger in Galveston on June 19 in 1865, this separate coach law issued by the Texas Legislature and taking effect on June 19 in 1891 was to have a long lasting effect in Brenham.