Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 223

Price Realized: $ 5,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(HISTORY.) Handbill for an early Texas Juneteenth commemoration. Letterpress handbill, 10 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches, on newsprint, reading "Just a Reminder of the Emancipation Celebration to be Held at the Woodlake Park, Friday and Saturday, June 19 and 20"; toned, minor wear on top edge. Denison, TX: Anderson's Printery, 19 June [1903?]
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This "Emancipation Celebration" was held by and for the Black residents of the neighboring towns of Denison and Sherman in north-central Texas, right by the Oklahoma border. The emancipation order issued in Texas on 19 June 1865 was only a few decades in the past, undoubtedly within living memory for many of the speakers and participants.

This handbill announces speakers (all of them Black) who had been added to an existing Juneteenth program. Most notable was Dr. Jesse M. Mosely (1864-1916), a Meharry College graduate and distinguished physician. He later served as a surgeon in the Mexican Army under Venustiano Carranza's government, for which he helped recruit Black soldiers. For this he was jailed in Laredo, TX for violating American neutrality, and then dragged from his jail cell and lynched in July 1916. Other speakers at this Juneteenth celebration included "Dr. J. Porter of Sherman," who was very likely Dr. Daniel Webster Porter (1855-1934), on "Negro as a Citizen"; Dr. D. Richard Blair (1851-1915) of Denison on "The Future of the Young Negro"; Dr. Anthony N. Prince (1865-1932) of Sherman on "Negro as a Business Man"; and Peter Williams (1859-1945), a Denison barber who served as master of ceremonies. In addition to these speakers, the handbill promises "Music by Sherman Orchestra." They were described in one contemporary newspaper account as "the Sherman colored orchestra" (McKinney Courier-Gazette, 17 July 1906).

No year is given on the circular. It was apparently issued after the 1901 creation of Denison's Woodlake Park, and before J.M. Mosely's move from Denison to Fort Worth, TX circa 1905. We can find only one other similar "Anderson's Printery" imprint, on a Grand Army of the Republic conference publication dated 1903. June 19 fell on a Friday in 1903.

Juneteenth, recently made a federal holiday, celebrates the emancipation order issued by the Union Army in Texas on 19 June 1865. Annual commemorations of the date were celebrated as early as 1866, often as "Jubilee Day" or "Emancipation Day," but not much printed documentation survives. This 1903 circular is the earliest Juneteenth celebration item we have seen on the market; Swann handled a large 1919 Juneteenth broadside back in 2007.