June 19 is celebrated in Texas as Juneteenth. It marks the anniversary of the day in 1865 when Union General Gordon Granger read the Emancipation Proclamation at the Port of Galveston.

It is a date marked in Texas by parades, festivals in parks, church services, family reunions, speeches, songfests and all manner of other celebrations. While most of these celebrations occur among predominately African-American communities, increasingly members of the Anglo community are starting to participate also.

For Juneteenth marks the day of the arrival of the first word of freedom for the 250,000 slaves in Texas, even though Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two-and-a-half years earlier, on January 1, 1863.

The glad tidings of freedom filtered gradually through our giant state as, one by one, individual plantation owners, business owners, farmers and other slave owners read the proclamation to the women, men and children they had owned until that day.

The Handbook of Texas reports, "the first broader celebrations of Juneteenth were used as political rallies and to teach freed African Americans about their voting rights. Within a short time, however, Juneteenth was marked by festivities throughout the state, some of which were organized by official Juneteenth committees.

"Some of the early emancipation festivities were relegated by city authorities to a town's outskirts; in time, however, black groups collected funds to purchase tracts of land for their celebrations, including Juneteenth. A common name for these sites was Emancipation Park." The first Juneteenth celebration in Austin was in 1867 and was under the direction of the Freedman's Bureau.

In the early 1900s blacks and whites often joined together for Juneteenth celebrations. But as the freed blacks began to prosper -- in some Texas cities, within a generation after slavery, they had their own physicians, lawyers, business owners, bankers -- many in the white community began to feel economically threatened. In the 1920s, the first of the infamous Jim Crow laws began to appear in Texas, and in the rest of the South.

By the late 1940s, early 1950s, Juneteenth was the only day on which African Americans in Texas could play in public city parks, swim in public pools, enter city-owned zoos, read in libraries and otherwise enjoy the civic fruits of the taxes they paid.

I was about seven or eight when I began to understand what was happening. I remember even as a child feeling ashamed. My parents tried to explain Jim Crow laws to us, and made clear their disagreement with such laws. We lived in West Texas, where the largest group targeted for racism was Mexicans and Mexican Americans, but the very few African Americans were treated no better. My father, a physician, caused an uproar in our small community in the early 1950s when he built a clinic with only one waiting room. When a wealthy rancher announced that he wasn't sitting in the same room with those [racist name for Hispanics and blacks], my father calmly said that he was welcome to wait in his pickup truck. Since my father was the only physician in three very large counties, the rancher decided to wait in the waiting room. It was my first lesson in witnessing. It was also my first lesson in the power of pragmatism. That rancher wasn't willing to suffer from his very painful sore throat just for the sake of a racist stance.

Ironically, in the early 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement had the effect of diminishing the popularity of Juneteenth celebrations, in part because of the push for integration. But in the 1970s, as African Americans began to explore their cultural heritage, the holiday was reborn as a symbol of pride in accomplishment in the face of unbelievable oppression.

One of my proudest days as reporter was in 1979, watching as my state legislature, which is not marked by progressive ideas, to say the least, passed a law declaring Juneteenth a state holiday.

The holiday has migrated as Black Texans have moved to other states, Louisiana and Oklahoma especially.

For Texans, and I hope for others, Juneteenth increasingly has provided people of all races an opportunity to recall the milestone in human rights the day represents for African Americans -- and thus for all of us.

I remember interviewing David Newton, the African-American sculptor creating the Freedman's Cemetery Memorial in Dallas. He was showing me the figure grouping that would represent freed African Americans. It represents the moment this man and woman hear the news of their freedom.

A shirtless muscular black man in rough homespun trousers with a rope belt and bare feet stands looking down at the woman beside him. One of his arms rests protectively across her shoulders. His back is crisscrossed with old scars from the master's whip.

She is kneeling; her torso slightly turned so that her arms are around the man's waist and her head is leaning against his hip. She is wearing a simple cotton blouse and skirt. Her feet also are bare. The blouse has slipped slightly off one shoulder where her arm is raised to embrace the man, just enough to reveal scars on her back also.

It is the moment after the initial burst of joy, David said. Both faces are somber, as they struggle to absorb the incredible news they have just heard. It is the moment they remember all those who died as slaves, all those who never reached the promised land of liberty. It is the moment when they wonder what will happen to them now. For even as they face the rising sun, one can still see the marks of the whip imprinted permanently on their backs. David said, "The scars are there to symbolize that scars don't just go away with the signing of a piece of paper. They are handed down from generation to generation. That's why I want this monument to be a healing place. We have a scarred land."

And so the two figures in the group comfort one another, turning as they always have to their own and to prayer, for the strength to move into freedom with grace, courage, and love.

And I turn to David and say, "The marks of the whip are also on the ones who did the whipping."

I believe that until the white population of the United States recognizes and acknowledges that reality, we will never bridge the divide between blacks and whites. Whether we like it or not, we whites are scarred by the hand that wielded that whip. Even though none of us, or perhaps even none of our ancestors, ever owned slaves, we all are the beneficiaries of a racist society in which we sit at the top. Being white gives us a daily advantage that we might deny, but that our black brothers and sisters see clearly. We all are caught in the bondage of racism.

And so as we sing together "Lift Every Voice" I pray we can one day stand in freedom together, acknowledging our blended histories and our common salvation. l

Katie Sherrod is a longtime reporter and public television producer who lives in Fort Worth, Tex. She is editor of Ruach, the publication of the Episcopal Women's Caucus.