University Libraries Celebrate African American History with Juneteenth Exhibit

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The University Libraries' special collections department has organized an exhibit in honor of Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day. This exhibit is hosted in the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education through the end of June. It will be displayed at the 16th annual Northwest Arkansas Juneteenth Celebration from 3-7 p.m., Saturday, June 15, at Murphy Park in Springdale.

Juneteenth recognizes the arrival of the news of freedom to the slaves of Galveston, Texas, and to all of the slaves of the southwest on June 19, 1865. The announcement in Texas by Union General Gordon Granger marked the end of slavery in the United States, two and a half years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Arkansas Legislature recognized Juneteenth in 2006, and Arkansas is one of more than forty states that recognize the holiday. Celebrations of emancipation and observations of Juneteenth have been held in some Arkansas communities, such as Wilmar, since the end of the Civil War.

The selections included in the exhibit come from the special collections of the University of Arkansas Libraries. The documents and photographs span more than 150 years of history, from before the Civil War, when slavery was deeply ingrained in the economic and social life of Arkansas; through the era of Jim Crow, when the gains of emancipation were limited throughout the South; and into the civil rights era, when African Americans once again moved toward equality in Arkansas and the rest of the nation.

The exhibit includes contracts and announcements of the sale of slaves in Arkansas, as well as an agreement between former slaves and their masters to be compensated for their work.

Photographs from Southland College, just outside of Helena, show African American faculty and students at a school founded for freed African Americans even before the Civil War ended. Other photographs show both the continuing struggle for civil rights in Arkansas and as well as a few of the African Americans from Arkansas who have made significant achievements.

For more information or assistance researching the history of Arkansas, email SpeColl@uark.edu or call 479-575-8444.