While the official name of this monument is the Texas African American History Memorial, it is popularly known as the Juneteenth Monument. Texas’s capitol has at least eight memorials to the Confederacy but up until 2016 there was nothing on the grounds dedicated to the one-in-seven Texans who are Black. At that time, Juneteenth, which started in Texas was on its way to becoming a National Holiday and the state, at the urging of the Black community, decided to honor the day and the people who celebrated it at the end of the Civil War.
I was standing at the Capitol Building photographing the Confederate Texas Ranger monument when I looked down the incline and could see the Juneteenth Monument. My wife Michele was born on Juneteenth and her church has an annual Juneteenth celebration, so this monument has a personal meeting for her. We were surprised at how large the memorial was and its mixture of realistic, idealized, and abstract art on the ediface.
Above, you can see the monument from its back side. The United States Flag and the Lone Star flag are very prominent. The artist wanted to tell the story of Blacks in Texas under the Texas Republic and under the United States. On the right you can see why Blacks were kidnapped and brought to Texas to pick cotton and care for cattle. In the center are two Black men who were involved in establishing Texas as a state, but who were shut out of its power. To the left is a scene depicting the revolt against Mexico and the Black participation in the insurrection.
Below gives you a chance to see the whole backside of the monument.
The central figures are a Black man and woman celebrating Juneteenth. I will talk about this more in a later photograph.
Below are two pioneering African Americans.
The stories of the two men are told truthfully at their base. Both were here when Texas got its independence from Mexico, but their community was still still enslaved.
The sculptor, Ed Dwight, has his name inscribed on the monument, along with the year it was completed “16.” Dwight was commissioned as an Air Force officer during the 1950s and in 1961 he was accepted into the training program from which the first astronauts were to be chosen. He was controversially not selected to go into space. In 2024, was launched into space on the Blue Origin NS-25 mission, becoming the oldest person sent into space. Later, after resigning from the Air Force, Dwight worked as an engineer and began sculpting. In 1974, Dwight started using scrap metal to create works on Black History. He has created 132 historical pieces over the last fifty years, many of them for National Parks.
The monument also recounts how slavery was one of the reasons for the Texas revolution. Mexico had prohibited slavery and in the 1830s, the Mexican government stepped up enforcement efforts. This led many large holders of enslaved African Americans to support the independence movement. Since the Texas Capitol highlights the revolution, this offers a nice antidote to the heroic depictions of the Alamo defenders.
The right side shows cotton and cattle, which slaves cultivated, and oil which became a major product of the Texas oilfields after the Civil War.
After the revolution, the slave population grew astoundingly under the new Anglo-American master class. Before independence there were only 5,000 slaves. By 1860, just 24 years later, the number had grown to 182,566 enslaved African Americans.
Although Texas owed its existence to the United States, after Lincoln’s election the white voters of Texas supported secession and entered into the Civil War. At the start of the war, nearly a third of the people of Texas were enslaved. In 1865, after the Union Army invaded Texas, the Emancipation Proclamation was read to those wrongfully enslaved Texas on June 19, 1865. That day is celebrated all across the United States as Juneteenth.
Reconstruction became the greatest period of freedom for all people in Texas. However, the white-only voters elected a legislature that in 1866 passed the Black Code which allowed Blacks to be taken prisoner by local law enforcement for not paying a debt and sold on the courthouse steps to whites who, for intents and purposes were not their “masters.” The 14th Amendment stopped this practice but it was overthrown when Texas was “Redeemed,” when locally elected white legislatures reimposed the discriminatory laws that came to be called Jim Crow.
The next plaque tells the story of Jim Crow up till the Second Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
On the front side, you can see the Black man and woman proclaiming “EMANCIPATION” after Juneteenth. However, to their right are Black prisoners held under Jim Crow laws being contracted out to perform enslaved labor.
Next to the prisoners are “Cowboys,” called “boys” because Black men were always called “boys” to deny them equality with whites.
Another plaque tells the heartening story of Black achievement after slavery and discrimination.
When we look at the center point of the monument, the man and the woman, both of them have shackles on their writs, showing them to have been slaves, but their chains have been broken. The man is holding up the light of Liberty.
In the woman’s hand is the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln, who issued it, was killed just two months before Juneteenth.
Lincoln’s words were a technical emancipation written in legal terms, but the woman is holding them up as though it was handed down from God through Abraham Lincoln.
The monument is near the street, with the Capitol behind it. It is a magnificent monument to Black Texans and a reminder that the view of history did change in the 21st Century since this was the first monument celebrating the Black community at the Capitol.
