_If you were a Black girl in Crockett, Texas in the 1990s, you wanted to compete in the Juneteenth pageant. And if you didn’t want to, somebody wanted you to. I can’t say I ever wanted to compete. My mother has four daughters. None of us competed—some mixture of disinterest, concern for how much it might cost, and genuine shyness. One year, the pageant coordinator encouraged me to sign up. I went to the information session and quickly decided I would dissolve into a puddle of embarrassment if I ever touched that stage. The Juneteenth pageant created opportunities for connection, but I would have to play hype woman from the crowd.

Hopeful contestants prepared for months—shopping for dresses and costumes, preparing a talent, attending pageant rehearsals. There were rare occasions where there might be a girl from out of town, perhaps someone’s cousin, who people didn’t really know. But for the most part, these were hometown girls competing in front of their hometown audience. On the night of the pageant, an encouraging audience would file into the school auditorium to watch the girls compete in two categories: Junior Miss Juneteenth for middle school-aged girls and Miss Juneteenth for teens.

This wasn’t a one and done kind of pageant. Most contestants competed multiple years, moving through the ranks from the junior competition to the senior one. Though a competition, the atmosphere was collegial and welcoming enough such that there weren’t lingering Juneteenth beefs that followed contestants from year to year. In 1989, my oldest sister’s bestie competed in the Junior Miss Juneteenth pageant. In a photo from the parade that winds through the center of town before ending in a historically Black neighborhood, she sits atop a black car and she is all smiles, even though she didn’t win. Her white off-the-shoulder dress with blue bows matched the blue umbrella she held to shield her from the sun. She reprised white in 1990 for a second go at the crown, this time rocking a satin dress with two layers of ruffles and ruching along the straps and her hair done in an asymmetrical bob. She didn’t take the crown that year either. It went to Rhonda Ware. Four years later, the Miss Juneteenth title went to Toya Clebourne, another of my sister’s friends. The year she won, she wore a long-sleeved black dress with gold embellishments that stopped just below the knees. Though nine years older than I am, I knew her from a distance. Her aunt was my favorite elementary school teacher (despite her efforts to discipline my left-handedness), and she always bragged about her niece. Such is Black life in small towns. Somebody’s auntie is your teacher, and the Blackened traditions that make you walk a little straighter and sit up a little taller create a web that keeps you tethered to each other. 

Juneteenth was second only to the homecoming football game where many, indeed, returned home to see who would be crowned queen and to reconnect with past classmates. Or, rivaled only by Christmas on the Square, where the one-way streets that circle the county courthouse in the center of town were blocked off for booths that sold crafts that no one actually wanted. Imagine a scene from almost any Hallmark Christmas movie set in a small town where boy meets girl, and you have a good sense of what was happening. In those Hallmark movies and a place like Crockett, these gatherings are the heartbeat of the town. But Juneteenth—a distinctively Black gathering—is different.

Crockett’s politics generally follow the trends of the state. With a population of just over 6,300, about forty-four percent of residents are Black, forty-one percent are white, and twelve percent are Hispanic. Even with a Black and Brown majority, it’s a politically conservative town—moderate if you squint your eyes and ignore the Republican party’s chokehold. Moosehead Café, the headquarters of the Houston County Republican Party, sits on the town square right across from the county courthouse. Their Facebook page displays visitors from all over the world holding up a TRUMP 2024 Make America Great Again banner. So, this celebration, which includes a pageant and parade and sometimes a community service element, was and is a radical act. It not only celebrated the past. In every instance, it put Blackness at the center of the town’s present and future.

As lore tells it, Juneteenth marks the day that some newly freed Black folks in Galveston abandoned their hoes and shovels in favor of singing, dancing, and eating together while others took immediately to the task of figuring out exactly what “freedom” meant for themselves and their families. Of course, this was only a beginning of a quest for freedom. In the immediate aftermath of emancipation, Southern states moved to enact Black Codes that restricted Black people’s movement, curtailed their ability to purchase land, and heightened their vulnerability to being arrested due to strict vagrancy laws. But the first Juneteenth celebration and every single one since has been a reminder that we shall not be moved. Gatherings over red velvet cake, watermelon, barbecue (red meat especially), and red drinks like Kool-Aid pay homage to the bloodshed in pursuit of freedom. In the words of the go-go band Mambo Sauce, Juneteenth celebrations—in all their delight, raucousness, and abundance—proudly proclaim, “we ain’t going nowhere.”

_In 2020, after five relocations, thirteen years, and a staunch vow to never return to Texas, I moved to Austin three months after the outbreak of coronavirus. That year, Crockett’s Juneteenth festivities were canceled. But when they resumed the following year, I did what any reasonable errant daughter does: I went home. As far as I could remember, I had not been home for Juneteenth since 2007. My reason for returning was twofold. The holiday is the day after my grandmother’s birthday. In the ten years since her passing, I’ve baked blackberry pie to commemorate the day. Some of my earliest maps were blackberry vines. We, mostly the younger grandkids, would scour fence lines for berries, pick them, and return home with full plastic bags. My grandmother made pie right then, or froze the fruit for future ones. When dementia began to steal her memory around 2008, my obsession with recreating her dishes began. Though we called it pie, it’s more like a cobbler. It was always made in a casserole dish—not a pie pan—and the juices from the berries would bubble up and stain the sides. But I do not remember how my grandmother prepared the dough for berry pie or how she layered everything to get a thick, soft layer in the middle. Not remembering how to make the crust like she did bothers me, but I try every single year. That summer, I—along with pie and expectations—traveled three hours east in the early morning hours so I could share pie with my mother and catch the Juneteenth parade.

When I arrived, the parade was already inching its way around the square towards Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It was dreadfully hot. People tucked themselves into the snatches of shade under storefront awnings. A trailer pulling the high school football team and cheerleaders in their blue-and-white uniforms slowly rolled past; the cheerleaders yelled and threw candies to the crowd. I tried to remember if our squad rode in the parade any of the four years I was a cheerleader. Maybe, but I couldn’t be sure. Trail riders repping their clubs trotted confidently along the road, some stopping on a dime to show off their horses. I took a quick video to share with my Canadian friend. Despite the stereotypical association of Texans with horses, I was proud to share images of these Black cowboys. And, of course, the crown jewels of the processional: the Juneteenth pageant contestants. Each was perched daintily on the hood of a car—careful to sit on a blanket or towel to keep from scorching herself in the heat. Each car had a sign or banner on the side announcing a contestant’s name. Miss Juneteenth 2021, Tania Davis, didn’t ride on the hood of a car. She was ferried on a trailer draped in white fabric and decorated with black, red, green, and gold balloons that formed an archway over the throne upon which she sat. Sometimes we can be so extra. I loved every minute of it.

The parade ended at I.T. Williams Park, which was named after a Black activist who dedicated his life to working with youth. But most locals know it as Prince Hall park, given its association with the low-income housing across the street that used to bear the same name. Participants and audience members alike gathered under a pavilion to hear motivational remarks and storytelling from local leaders. I looked around, catching the eyes of people I hadn’t seen in years, people who offered hugs and smiles behind masks. When I saw Ms. FeFe, a member of the church I attended in high school, I shuffled over to her between rows of chairs. “Girl, I haven’t seen you in ages!” I smiled with embarrassment. These days when I visit, I rarely see anyone who is not my mother, a close family member, or my best friend from childhood if she is in town. I have been gone too long, I tell myself. It may be unwarranted hyper-self-awareness, but it does not stop me from wanting to retreat into the background. I sheepishly said, “I know I know,” which she waved off with a “glad to see you now!” I watched small children, restless, ready for the formal part of the celebrations to be over so that they could run around and play. Across the grass, away from the pavilion where we sat, people pulled up in their cars to shoot the shit. Out of respect for the program, no one played their music loudly, but anyone familiar with the area knew that as the day wore on, the whole scene would transform. I smiled at the everydayness of it, at what both gatherings signified: a right to take up space.

2021 was the year Juneteenth became a federal holiday. I was vexed by it. I understand the lure of recognition. So many of the fights Black folks have fought in this country have been bouts to be seen, to be recognized—sometimes that in itself eclipsing a freedom that shapeshifts before our very eyes. But on a deeply personal level, I feel the kind of panic a wayward daughter has about a homeplace that is under threat.

Juneteenth, it all its Black country glory, has always been a day of celebration and reverence for us. In the transition to “Juneteenth is for everyone,” I am fiercely adamant that our traditions—this one in small-town Texas in particular—are not lost in a sea of platitudes and thirty-percent-off sales.

It is a pause, a respite, a reminder that even when we are pressed in on all sides by capitalism, change, and conservatism, there is power in the art of Black gatherings. But during the parade and the speeches afterward, I didn’t think of any of this. I simply followed the processional and people with my eyes, trying to see if I recognized any of the faces in the crowd, beaming with delight when the recognition is shared—evidence that waywardness alone couldn’t keep me from being welcomed there.

This series was published with support from The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts.