Proclaiming the energy of emancipation
In the ninth year of its local observance in Port St. Joe, and the fourth year since it was designated a federal holiday, and the 159th year since it marked that day in Texas, June 19, when a Union general delivered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, Gulf County marked Juneteenth in celebration Saturday.
Beginning with a golf cart parade that wound from Reid Avenue to the grounds of the former Washington High School, the day featured a historical reenactment by the 2nd Infantry Regiment United State Colored Troops Living History Association.
Remarks were delivered by Sgt. Major Jarvis Rosier, Sr., retired after 34 years in the Army, who led the living history group in their recreation of a camp, on the high school grounds, that colored troops might have been housed in when they fought in the Civil War following a gradual admission into non-combatant roles that ended with Order #143 on May 22, 1863 with the creation of armed soldier units.
Rosier spent the bulk of his remarks detailing the Florida wartime experience for these troops, noting in broad strokes the flurry of modern controversies that have surrounded African-American history in the schools.
“In some cases they work to delete our history altogether,” he said.
“We must add to those pages of history,” said Minnie Likely, who was instrumental through the Old West Florida Primitive Baptist Association in bringing the Tallahassee-based history group to the city’s Juneteenth event. “Let us plan to write our story among history.”
In Apalachicola, Holy Family Senior Center was the site of an afternoon political forum, sponsored by H’COLA (Hillside Coalition of Laborers for Apalachicola), followed by an evening of food vendors, entertainment and children’s games outside.
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.