LIFE

Church looks to the past on Emancipation Day

Marina Brown
Democrat correspondent

It’s hard to think about today, when news is instant, when each thought, decision, or early morning communique by a president is waiting with our morning coffee. Hard to fathom that 150-some years ago it took nearly two yearsbefore official word of the Emancipation Proclamation and with it, the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery reached Florida.

The Civil War’s battles had jockeyed back and forth since 1861 as Abraham Lincoln strove to keep the Union together. In an effort to force the hand of the Confederacy, Lincoln had signed a preliminary proclamation in September of 1862 freeing slaves of states that were in rebellion against the Union. When those states didn’t yield, he made the proclamation official in January of 1863. Yet it wasn’t until the end of the Civil War on May 20, 1865, that Union Brigadier General Edward M. McCook stood on the steps of what is now known as Knott House in Tallahassee and announced to people held in bondage that at last with the Union intact, they were indeed free citizens.

Emancipation Day is celebrated on different dates depending on when word reached the various states. National Emancipation Day is June 19th, “Juneteenth,” the day when the freeing of the slaves was officially proclaimed in Texas. 

Tallahassee’s own celebrations of Emancipation Day will happen in several venues across town. There will be a re-enactment of the historic pronouncement of Emancipation with actors taking on the roles of General McCook and Frederick Douglas at the Knott House. Later in the day, many African American museums and historical archives will be open to the public. But there is one place where since the 1976 Bicentennial Celebration, in its own more quiet way, the May 20th Emancipation Day is commemorated.

From left: Geneva Hackley Westley, Larry Williams, Dilcey Hogan of Mount Pleasant Primitive Baptist Church celebrating Emancipation Day, May 20th with collections of old artifacts brought in my parishioners, a Gospel Chorus, and food inspired by yesteryear's recipes.

Mount Pleasant Primitive Baptist Church on Thomasville Road is filled with many honored Church Mothers, wise women who lead exemplary Christian lives. And among them is Mother Dilcey Hogan, a soft-spoken woman with vision and drive. And rather than let May 20 pass by as just another day, she, along with a coterie of other organizers, has conducted celebrations of not only the day when word came of “Freedom,” but of the past in general.

Hogan hopes to let those younger generations have a peek into the past, to reconnect, one generation at a time, with the enclaves of African-Americans who used to live near Lake Jackson,  Bannerman Road, by Lake Hall, in Sleepy Hollow, and in the many other communities that were social and parochial spheres unto themselves — before emancipation and in many cases into the 1960s.

John Bailey, 78, has the physique he must have had all his life and the energy to go with it. Slim and dapper even in work clothes, he has brought to Mount Pleasant artifacts from his early life “out near the Fleishman Plantation.” Along with other older parishioners who on May 20 will bring to the church physical memorabilia from family, farm and daily life, Bailey will line up the ice tongs, the chamber pot, the kerosene glass lamp and a home-made “rub board” for younger members of the congregation to handle and touch and ask about what life was like two or even three generations before.

“This is so important… to keep a continuity with our old communities and to remember where we came from and how we got to where we are today,” said Hogan.

Bailey reminisces about the early days where with his mother, a domestic worker, and father, a sharecropper and gardener at McClay Gardens, the family would dine on cornbread, neck bones and black-eyed peas. He knows how to make hoe handles with a “draw knife,” to take a quick bath in a “toe tub,” and to make sweet “tea cakes” with brown sugar and syrup.

John Bailey, 78, with family artifacts dating from the last century to this. Bailey's grandfather was a sharecropper near the Fleishman Plantation. Their family house didn't get electricity until 1952 and indoor plumbing until 1966. Asked about MLK's dream, Bailey says, "I've seen it! It's alive and well."

Bailey remembers “pellin” (selling) vegetables from his bike and later the pure fun of May 20th when the drums would come out, the fish go on the grill, and the boys and girls would “ring play” by stealing each other’s dance partners in a big outside circle around a fire. He wants to share these stories with youngsters and their parents to keep the continuum of African-American community memory alive.

Hogan and her sister, Geneva Hackley Westley, are joined by Deacon Larry Williams inside the tidy church. The two women take turns looking over an old wind-up Victrola that was owned by the great-grandfather of Hogan’s late husband. He was born in 1867, two years clear of having been born into slavery. They are laughing about “lye corn,” dry corn that is boiled in water containing lye whose pH splits open the husks for hominy. “And I remember the “rolling store”…. You remember that?” In the black enclaves where many had no transportation to a city store, “stores” packed into the back of a wagon or truck that would roll through the communities bringing cheeses, sausages, thread, blankets and other sundries.

These are the kinds of memories that Mount Pleasant wants to share not only with its own community but with all of Tallahassee on May 20. Elder Lewis Anderson, pastor of Mount Pleasant said his congregation “has been blessed by Mother Hogan for recognizing the importance of Emancipation Day for the last 42 years” and he is excited to welcome the Gospel Chorus from St. Rilla Missionary Baptist Church and Bishop Issac Randolph of Deliverance By Faith Church to participate in the celebration.

Starting at 4 p.m. on May 20 there will be plenty of food to share, stories to be told, and old-time artifacts to be handled. There will be a free-will offering and plenty of fellowship at no cost whatsoever. Anderson said, “This is a time of remembrance for some and a history lesson for others. And everyone is invited.” Deacon Larry Williams says he’s urging the fish to keep biting so he’ll have lots to share.

Contact Marina Brown at mcdb100@comcast.net. 

If you go

What: Celebration of Emancipation Day

When: 4 p.m. Saturday, May 20

Where: Mount Pleasant Primitive Baptist Church,4101 Thomasville Road