Discovering Juneteenth Spokane Festival Helps Educate Kids About Important Milestone In American History

Sun., June 21, 1998

Luke Timmerman Staff writer

Quick - what happened on Dec. 7, 1941? How about Nov. 22, 1963?

The bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy resonate through American history lessons.

Anybody who lived through them remembers, and children who don’t remember the dates are scolded by teachers.

But what about June 19, 1865?

Few people recognize the date or its significance: the day Union troops in Texas freed the last of the slaves.

Una McDowell thinks we all should know that.

“We need to educate our children and help them remember our roots,” said McDowell, a member of the Umoja Steering Committee, which organized the Juneteenth celebration Saturday at Spokane’s Liberty Park. About 150 people showed up for the fourth annual event.

People walked through a Cheney Cowles Museum display of photographs taken by Spokane’s Wally Hagin.

He recently donated 13,000 of his portraits of blacks, dating back to 1945.

Others checked out the art on display, books for sale, or chatted with Spokane police officers.

Taped music ranged from ‘50s rock to modern hip-hop. The mood was neighborly, like a giant family picnic, with people eating barbecued chicken sandwiches and sipping lemonade in the shade.

It wasn’t an exclusively African American crowd.

“This is for everyone,” said another organizer, Ella Huffman.

Still, Huffman acknowledged that very few outside the black community know anything about the celebration.

Larry Dolezal admitted he had never heard of Juneteenth until his daughter, Rachel, searched the Internet for a celebration to bring her artwork.

When they found out about Spokane’s celebration, Dolezal decided to make the 3-hour drive from Troy, Mont., to help display Rachel’s African American collages and mixed-media renderings.

The side benefit was to expose his adopted black children - 4-year-old Izaiah and 3-year-old Esther - to history and culture that’s largely foreign to northwestern Montana.

“We thought we’d bring them, because this is about freedom,” Dolezal said.

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