Don Krieger: Juneteenth at Carter-Howell-Strong Park in Tallahassee

“… all men are created equal …” Declaration of Independence, July 4,1776. 

• Eighty-seven years later: “… all persons held as slaves … are and henceforward shall be free …” Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863. 
• Two years later federal troops take control of Texas to ensure that all enslaved people are freed, June 19, 1865, Juneteenth

Eighty-nine years later: “… in the field of public education … segregation is a denial of equal protection …” Brown vs Board of Education, May 17, 1954. 

• Eight years later federal marshals escort James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, October 1, 1962.
• The next year federalized National Guard troops escort Vivian Malone and Alexander Hood past Governor George Wallace at the University of Alabama, June 11, 1963. 
• Seven years later over Governor Claude Kirk’s objections, federal marshals enforce court-ordered busing for Florida school children, Spring 1970.

Two-hundred forty years after America’s Independence Day: “… one in a thousand black men [in America] can expect to be killed by police …” Edwards et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, August 2019, 116(34): 16793-16798

Juneteenth at Carter-Howell-Strong Park

Just clear of the underbrush I walk the street’s edge up Dewey, an Old Frenchtown morning and ninety-five degrees, rusty metal roofs, a rare two-story, vinyl siding and the original owner engraved on a plaque, a man on a bicycle, toothless, a shoeless woman in an overgrown yard, a pickup on flat tires — the driver’s door on top of the engine …  the Fourth Street Market, meat cases and canned juice, bagged ice and grey fruit, twenty for a baseball cap, twenty more for a case of Coke. 

The Frenchtown in my city — we never walked there as kids, and they never came around our streets either. But some things have changed.

I jog shirtless round the lagoon, hot sun on my pale skin, a great egret with fanned wings on the fountain in the center, wind-rippled water to the left, pigeons and crows, geese and laughing gulls settled in the shade or foraging together, trash and pond scum to the right, and from every bench men wave “hello,” shade trees over-hanging. So many offer a kind word, a sharing hand, but each must repeat himself so my kind may hear.

Copyright 2025 Don Krieger. From We in America by Don Krieger.