HANCEVILLE, Ala. – With black voices and experiences being highlighted on a national and international stage since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis Police custody in May, many Americans are just now learning about the holiday of Juneteenth. On June 19, 1865, federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to ensure all enslaved people (some 250,000) were freed. Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, slavery had officially ended in the United States. Saturday afternoon, the Committee for a Better Cullman (CFABC) held a community cookout in celebration of the holiday – the first of its kind (at least widely publicized) in Cullman County.
CFABC members brought food, drinks and treats for guests to enjoy, as well as water guns for the kids. Attendees walked around the park, listened to music by black artists, encountered the local wildlife when a family of ducks walked up to the pavilion, enlisted the help of some kids with water guns to cool down from the heat and enjoyed each other’s company.
Event coordinators and participants arrived to find their designated park pavilion, along with light posts and other fixtures around the park, decorated with pro-law enforcement blue ribbons, which were placed, according to a source in Hanceville city government, by members of the group CullmanStrong. Coordinators talked about removing the ribbons from the pavilion, but ultimately left them in place. In the parking area at the park’s other entrance, a group of concerned citizens assembled to keep an eye on the celebration, some using binoculars to keep a closer eye than others.
Despite community concern about the event, some of it voiced loudly to city leaders, the visible law enforcement presence at the cookout was not large, though officers remained on hand throughout the event and additional patrol vehicles passed by the park regularly. Event coordinators had four “Legal Observers” from the National Lawyers’ Guild present. According to the Guild, observers are part of a larger program “designed to enable people to express their political views as fully as possible without unconstitutional disruption or interference by the police and with the fewest possible consequences from the criminal justice system.”
Before the festivities kicked off, The Tribune talked to one of the event organizers, A.C. Poteete, to get an idea of how he felt everything was going.
“It’s going well. I almost think we should’ve drug it out a little longer because I honestly wasn’t expecting all the press. I kinda wanted to say something one time to everyone, but as soon as we got set up the cameras started coming out,” he commented. “We’re here to uplift black voices. We knew going into this that members of the black community may not feel welcome coming to an event like this, but that’s why we’re having this: to let them know that we’re here and we want to hear your voices, what you need from us and what we can do for you. We love you; this is a day to celebrate you, and we wanna celebrate you every day. We wanna make Cullman County a more inclusive place, but to know what we need to do to help Black people, we need to hear from Black people. If the Black community doesn’t come out this year, once they see that it was all good this year then maybe they’ll come out next year or maybe they’ll reach out to me. Just reach out and we’ll make things happen.”
On the decision to hold the cookout, Poteete said, “In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, I think it woke some people up here in Cullman. We were there to support those people (the protesters in Depot Park), and this just sorta grew out of that. We know that there are a few, but there are black people in Cullman County, so we wanted to say, ‘We recognize this, we recognize you, and we love you. We wanna make this a place that’s welcome for everybody.’ We just wanna start the conversation. It’s wild saying that in 2020, but we just wanna start the conversations.”
