Teri Gentry from History Colorado’s Black Community will give a presentation on Juneteenth on June 19, 2024 at Frisco Historic Park.
Kit Geary/Summit Daily News
President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which promised to free all African Americans enslaved in the Southern states that seceded during the Civil War, officially went into effect on January 1, 1863. However, the war raged, and slavery continued in states where Confederate forces held control. The last slaves were finally freed on June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and freed the slaves in Texas by presidential decree. Juneteenth, declared a federal holiday by President Joe Biden in 2019, commemorates the final abolition of slavery in the United States.
Terry Gentry of History Colorado’s Black Community gave Summit County residents insight into the history of the Juneteenth holiday, especially in Colorado, sharing trivia and history that is often omitted from the holiday’s story.
Gentry said this period is rich in history for Colorado, with the intersection of the emancipation movement, the movement for statehood and Native American movements fighting to protect land that was once theirs.
While people in the North were trying to achieve emancipation, the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Colorado’s Front Range were fighting violations of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed in 1851 and which had returned some of their land to them.
Some of the land that had been returned to the tribes was eventually taken from them again with the signing of the Treaty of Fort Wise in 1861. Conflict between the tribes and settlers intensified, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho agreed to surrender.
“The Arapaho and Cheyenne people followed all of the instructions they were given, including waving white flags,” Gentry said.
The tribes’ surrender was not accepted peacefully and the Sand Creek Massacre occurred, in which approximately 230 Native Americans were massacred.
After the 1864 massacre, many Native Americans relocated to Kansas and Oklahoma. At the same time, slaves in Texas, who had recently received news of their emancipation, were making their way to Colorado.
Gentry said that because of the influx of people from Texas, much of Colorado’s oral history of emancipation has its roots in Texas. He said Colorado’s modern Juneteenth celebrations honor the many former Texas slaves who migrated to the Centennial State.
Today, she said, much of Colorado’s emancipation history is told in museums and commemorative events in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood and on Colfax Avenue.
Colfax Avenue, the longest commercial street in the United States, is named after Schuyler Colfax, the architect of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The former Speaker of the House overrode President Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Act and passed the bill into law.
“That’s my favorite street to drive on,” Gentry said. “It feels like an honor to me every time.”
