America will celebrate Emancipation Day, also known as Juneteenth on June 19 – commemorating the end of slavery in our country – but the nation’s most recently recognized national holiday has been observed on different days for more than 160 years by Black Americans.
Take Tennessee, where the Eighth of August, known as Emancipation Day, has been the traditional celebration to mark the end of slavery, remind the nation of its bloodguilt and agitate for a more perfect Union.
That celebration is tied to Aug. 8, 1863, when Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee during the Civil War and future U.S. president, released the men, women and children he enslaved on his plantation in Greeneville. But freedom from bondage wasn’t a singular moment for enslaved people across Tennessee, and for most, certainly did not come on the Eighth of August.
Instead, emancipation came in a series of fits and starts in Tennessee and across the South, and the patchwork nature of commemorating it speaks to the arduous process of extinguishing the evil of enslavement in America.
Different dates, same celebration of freedom
The hodgepodge of dates marking emancipation is part of the appeal of celebrating the event, said William Isom, the director of Black in Appalachia, an East Tennessee PBS initiative to highlight the history of Black communities in the mountain South.
The diversity of the celebrations, Isom told the USA Today Network – Tennessee, helps us better understand a broader picture of how emancipation was experienced.
“I like that diversity,” he said. “I think that diversity in dates allow us to coalesce around Juneteenth officially, and then locally, it kind of shoves off some of the homogenization of a national holiday and they can celebrate locally their own history and culture.”
Some examples of when emancipation is celebrated:
Sept. 22 in Southwestern Ohio, the date when President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862
Eighth of August, mostly celebrated in East Tennessee and Southern Appalachia, 1863
Feb. 3 in West Virginia, the date the state ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in 1865
Robert Bland is an assistant professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he specializes in the Black experience in the post-Civil War South. His book “Requiem for Reconstruction” publishes next year.
Invented traditions – ones not necessarily tied to a specific date for everyone – are crucial for a community’s identity, and people need reasons to celebrate their community. This can, and should, look different in different places, Bland told The Tennessean.
“In the post-George Floyd moment, the nation found an easy answer (with) Juneteenth, which was hyper-regional to Texas. It’s important and useful, but it’s not a national story,” he said.
“In the Tennessee context, East Tennessee developed these sets of traditions around the Eighth of August, and it gives Black Appalachia an identity and residence.”
Enslaved Tennesseans were not universally freed on the Eighth of August
Ending slavery in Tennessee was complicated by the state’s location and role in national politics. Tennessee was constantly pushed and pulled by political and military forces from the North and South.
Union soldiers took control of the state relatively early in the war, reclaiming first West and Middle Tennessee by 1862, then much of East Tennessee in 1863. But the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, that freed enslaved people across most of the Confederacy didn’t apply in Tennessee because Johnson urged Lincoln to exclude the state.
And enslaved Tennesseans weren’t free on the Eighth of August 1863 when Johnson freed his own slaves in a largely symbolic move. They still weren’t free the following year after Union Gen. William Sherman launched the March to the Sea through the heart of the Confederacy in late 1864.
No, slaves in Tennessee weren’t freed until a restricted electorate approved the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery as a condition of rejoining the Union, on Feb. 25, 1865.
Tennessee’s vote came 18 months after Johnson had declared his slaves free. By then, he was the U.S. vice president under Lincoln and just weeks away from ascending to the presidency following Lincoln’s assassination in April.
So, the Eighth of August is a celebration of a concept, not a reality.
This is largely the story you’ll find all across America: Emancipation happened slowly and where you were determined when you obtained liberty.
Isom, for example, recounts his own family’s story. His ancestors were enslaved in Gate City, Virginia (north of Kingsport), and weren’t freed until Confederate forces there surrendered in April 1865 as the Civil War wound down.
Juneteenth is tied to June 19, 1865, when Union Gen. Gordon Granger ordered enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas.
How enslaved men forced the issue in East Tennessee
Around the time of Johnson’s Eighth of August proclamation in 1863, the Union army was wrestling back East Tennessee. Knoxville came under Union control in September without a fight. The Siege of Knoxville, which took place in late November and early December, was a failed Confederate attempt to eject Union troops following the Confederate victory at Chickamauga.
Johnson’s announcement, coupled with the Union advances in the region, became a quiet invitation for enslaved men to “bring the Union lines” to them by running away from plantations and joining regiments of the United States Colored Troops, said Aaron Astor, a Maryville College professor and 19th century historian.
“There isn’t anything significant about Johnson freeing his own slaves,” Astor told the Tennessean, “but it comes to take on meaning because it’s around that period where he starts moving toward enlistment of slaves into the Union Army.”
At the same time, if enslaved men could make it to a liberated city – Knoxville, Nashville or Memphis – they could live in de facto refugee camps and work for the war effort or join the Army.
“They were escaping, in certain instances, Hawkins and Grainger counties … the region was in turmoil,” Isom said. “Slave owners oftentimes lost control of the situation. Everyone is hungry. There’s no food. So, it would have been easier for an enslaved person to hit the road around that time. Because the region was in complete and utter chaos. It was an opportunity that a lot of people took.”
The opportunity wasn’t for everyone, though. Women and children rarely, if ever, had this option, said Bland, the UT historian. Since they were unable to fight, the Union camps were not a place for families to escape enslavement.
More: Looking to celebrate Juneteenth? Here are a few events around Middle Tennessee
How do Nashville, other cities celebrate the Eighth of August?
The first recorded celebration of the Eighth of August as Emancipation Day was in Greeneville in 1871, according to archives kept by the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, the repository of Black history and culture located in Knoxville.
In the years that followed, Knoxville became an epicenter for this celebration, which drew thousands of visitors annually. Other celebrations took place in Clarksville and Memphis and eventually stretched into surrounding states.
The Frist Museum in Nashville hosts a yearly free celebration with a curated museum exhibit dedicated to Emancipation Day, along with music, poetry and more.
In 1939, Knoxville’s “official” spokesperson for the Black community, Dr. James H. Presnell, signed a proclamation urging all employers to release as many Black workers as was practicable so they could celebrate the Eighth of August at Chilhowee Park, according to Beck archives.
During that period, and until 1948, Chilhowee Park was opened to Black residents only one day a year: Aug. 8.
Beginning in 2015, Beck began hosting the Annual Eighth of August Jubilee, first at Chilhowee Park, and now at locations around the community.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why Aug. 8 Is Emancipation Day for Black Tennesseans