The service is to be held on Juneteenth at 6:30 p.m. on the steps of the Capitol building. It will be a time of reflection on West Virginia’s history of racism, remembering those who were murdered, and repentance of the state’s complicity in the practice of lynching.
The West Virginia Council of Churches will hold a Service of Remembrance and Repentance for those who were lynched in West Virginia.
The service is to be held on Juneteenth at 6:30 p.m. on the steps of the Capitol building. It will be a time of reflection on West Virginia’s history of racism, remembering those who were murdered, and repentance of the state’s complicity in the practice of lynching.
Rev. Ronald English, former Pastor of First Baptist Church of Charleston, will deliver a message at the service.
“I think that intention was not to so much bring around regret, or guilt in terms of what they are up to, but they do want to make sure that we connect the suffering and the deaths of African Americans, and particularly in the state of West Virginia because we didn’t know that they have a burial ground of African Americans in the state of West Virginia until very recently,” English said.
The service is a program of the council’s Dismantling Racism Task Force, which has focused its efforts on establishing a West Virginia Historical Remembrance Project to help the state understand its past and to place a monument on the State Capitol Grounds highlighting African American history in West Virginia.
Pastor Kay Albright sits on the board for the task force and said it is important to face history and repent for wrongdoing.
“Well, it is important for people to realize the gravity of the lynching back in the 1800s, 1900s,” Albright said. “And it’s important to have a day, which is freedom has not been freedom for these lynching victims, and we want them to be free. And so we’re saying we’re having the service to name them and to have freedom for them.”
The seventh annual event, Juneteenth 2023, happens this Saturday, June 17th, from 5 to 9 p.m. on the front steps of the State Capitol.
The seventh annual event, Juneteenth 2023, happens this Saturday, June 17 from 5 to 9 p.m. on the front steps of the State Capitol. The history-fulfilling fest is complete with games, prizes, crafts, vendors, food and more. This event is free of charge and open to the public, and everyone is encouraged to bring a blanket or lawn chair.
Jill Upson, the Executive Director of the Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs (HHOMA), said Juneteenth is a day of positive vibes and unity.
“This is an important day in our nation’s history, and we are proud to come together to celebrate the end of slavery and the beginning of true freedom for all Americans,” Upson said. “We look forward to welcoming families and community members to this wonderful event.”
Upson said the entertainment line up features diverse West Virginia minority talent that would otherwise go unrecognized.
“We have a wonderful comedian who’s absolutely hilarious, his name is Kevin Jackson,” Upson said. “We’ve got some spoken word artists, and a child drummer. We also have a couple of rappers included in that lineup. I think it’s a good representation of the different styles and genres of art that’s out there.”
The celebration headliner is Grammy nominated R&B group Dru Hill. Upson said this is a reunited, classic soul group.
“They’ve done a lot of changes, specific for their 25th Anniversary,” she said. “The entire group is back together, including Cisco, who went off and had a very successful solo career. He will be alongside founding members SisQo, Nokio, Jazz, and the latest additions Smoke and Black from the R&B group ‘Playa,’ former members Scola and Tao rejoin the dynamic lineup.”
HHOMA is hosting the Juneteenth Celebration in partnership with FestivALL Charleston. For more information and the entire Juneteenth 2023 entertainment lineup, click here.
In 2021, the Juneteenth celebration became a federal holiday. The date recognizes when Blacks in Galveston, Texas were told about the Emancipation Proclamation two and half years after it was signed.
In 2021, the Juneteenth celebration became a federal holiday. The date recognizes when Blacks in Galveston, Texas were told about the Emancipation Proclamation two and half years after it was signed.
News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Rev. Ron English to find out more about the holiday and the history behind it. English is a retired pastor who grew up in Atlanta with Martin Luther King Jr. and his family before moving to Charleston, West Virginia in the early 1970s.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Explain the significance of Juneteenth. Tell me about Juneteenth.
Eric Douglas
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Rev. Ron English
English: Juneteenth is really the Liberation Day of African Americans. That was when word arrived in Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. And therefore, Juneteenth became the Liberation Day of Blacks in Texas. And it evolved into a kind of celebration that had historic roots.
I think Juneteenth was the first authentic Black holiday. Because, at first, King Day was considered a Black holiday, but it really hadn’t become that. It has been a celebration of the convenient King, rather than the radical King. It really is a date that is focused on King’s speech, the “I Have a Dream” speech, rather than the one that he gave the day before he was killed that called out three evils of America. So, in that sense, Juneteenth is more authentic, because it has a story behind it. And that story cannot be ignored, and therefore the day cannot be ignored, without telling the story. And when you get that kind of narrative behind a day, that gives it significant significance and gives it power.
Douglas: Juneteenth started out as a fairly regional holiday. It was really just a Texas celebration at first and just in the last 30 to 40 years.
English: That’s why I brought along the book that’s written by Arnette Gordon Reed, Pulitzer Prize winner. The best folk who can tell the story about Texas are from Texas. And I read this little passage, it says, “As years have gone by, I have had occasions to think more about the tragedy and triumph in relation to Texas’ past, present and future as possible, very likely that my time there prepared me for the work I do as a historian of the early American Republic, another moment when triumph and tragedy were inexhaustibly intertwined, distinct, leaving those threads and viewing them critically, it has been in fact a good thing in the context of our national history, broadening our understanding of who we are, and who we are now.”
Listen to an extended version of this interview with Rev. Ron English.
Douglas: What does the holiday mean to you personally, but also what does it becoming a federal holiday mean to you personally?
English: Another Texan who is a good friend of mine, who pastors a church right across the street [at] First Baptist Church, Paul Dunn, is from Texas. And so when we had a conversation about Juneteenth, he gave me the four primary reasons that Black folk and Texas started celebrating Juneteenth.
First of all, it was the reunification and reconnection of the family, which is celebrated the way that the Fourth of July is celebrated. The second thing was it led to a commitment to deal with mass illiteracy, as a result of slaves not being taught to read, or allowed to read during the time of that slavery. It recognized the establishment of schools to address the problem, which was the genesis of the historically black colleges, such as Wiley College in Texas, and 1860s, 1873, in Marshall, Texas, and other Black colleges, Prairie View in 1867. So you can see that right after the emancipation of Blacks on Juneteenth, came Black colleges to help deal with the illiteracy problem that they had, as a result of not being able to read and not being allowed to read during slavery.
The third thing was a commitment to get involved in the political process. And identifying Blacks who could run for office. But it also had another interesting feature. Those who were liberated sued their slave owners for the money that the slave owners made on their backs. And that is the first taste of reparations.
Douglas: Did they sue for the time between the Emancipation Proclamation to Juneteenth, or did they sue for the money they made on their backs, period?
English: They sued for the money that had been made on their backs, period. That’s why that’s so significant in terms of how it established a kind of economic base for them being able to start for what they have been deprived of, in terms of their own resources. And now they were able to start, in terms of really building resources. That really became the basis of Black capitalism.
Douglas: You were a contemporary of Martin Luther King, Jr. I think you’re a few years younger than he was, but you consider him a mentor — joining the church and joining the civil rights movement.
English: His family and my family were very close. My mother used to talk to Mama King into the wee hours in the morning, because they just had that kind of connection. And I have pictures of him when he was a kid. One of the pictures that I have is him sticking his head out of a car window. And my mother put on that picture, “just hanging out,” because he was actually hanging out of the window of that car. So our families had gone back for a while. He licensed me into the ministry, and I served as his assistant until his death. And I gave the prayer at his funeral.
So there were opportunities, as I think about them now, being with him, every once in a while alone, and I got so excited that I would forget about what I wanted to say. And now so many questions, I wish I had asked about that. That was the relationship that we had, primarily by way of our family connections.
In 1962, when they started boycotting in Atlanta, a friend of mine did a sit-in, because we weren’t really allowed to get into the movement because of our age and that kind of thing. Later on, there were some other things that we were able to participate in more actively.
Seeing how he grew and how he took on the kind of issues that really, I believe, caused his death. I don’t think he was killed because he was a civil rights leader. I think because he had called out the three evils of American society.
Douglas: What are those?
English: Those were the issues of racism, militarism and economic injustice. And that’s how he started the Poor People’s Campaign. That was going to be a march on Washington, to really address those three issues. Those were the three evils that he had identified, and I believe that you hardly ever hear that on the celebration of King Day, because they are still with us.
Douglas: When he was shot, he was actually working on a sanitation workers strike, right?
English: Oh, yeah, in Memphis. He was shot when he had just spoken the night before. That speech almost makes you think he anticipated his death, in terms of how he ended it. “I may not get there with you. But we as a people will get to the promised land. ‘My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’” It was almost like he had some anticipation of his death. And when it happened, when the assassination happened the next day on April 4, it really almost, [was] comforting for me and a lot of people that he anticipated. It’s kind of a marvelous way to make a last speech, a marvelous, majestic moment in terms of use and that anticipation to make that proclamation.
Douglas: I think I remember you telling me that you had actually expressed to Dr. King that you wanted to join the movement, right before he was killed. But realistically, you grew up in this, or you’ve lived this for 60 years, since King started the marches.
English: That’s why it’s been so interesting to watch the panorama of the progress, as well as the retrogression, as we had talked about earlier, in terms of how we now really see the need for the healing, because we now see the depth of the disease, the depth of the deprivation, depth of the separation and it has all kinds of morbid motives, in terms of what has sanction, what many of us thought we would not see.
But at the same time, because of the rise of the Proud Boys, and the visualization of it, because it’s caught on camera — the exposure has really brought it into the eyes, minds and spirits of those of us that view it. But it also brings to light, the depth of the disease, and you can’t deal with it, you can’t find a cure until you deal with the depth of the disease.
