Juneteenth, Then and Now
June 19 is Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas finally learned that, two and a half years earlier, the Emancipation Proclamation had legally set them free.
That gap of time still boggles the mind.
If regular Juneteenth commemorations have been held in Swarthmore, they have not been announced in the pages of this newspaper, which record observances and public celebrations of Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Chanukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa.
I would like to change that.
White and black Swarthmore have an uneasy history together.
Here’s an illustration. Almost exactly 89 years ago, on June 12, 1931, the Swarthmorean published an article about one half of a twin house on the corner of Yale and Brighton avenues being rented to a black family. This rental, the article says, “marks the most northern approach in the borough that the ‘Scrapple Hundred’ section has made up to this time.”
“Scrapple Hundred” was a local pejorative for Swarthmore’s historically black neighborhood.
The article reports that “Neighbors in this section are highly incensed at this latest extension of the colored district and point out that, with one half of the house already rented to colored people, the other half will be desirable only to colored families, which will definitely establish the colored section on one of the main streets of the borough.”
A petition circulated, objecting to the rental. Anti-black feeling among some white Swarthmoreans was exacerbated by a party given by a black family that “broke up at two o’clock in the morning only when the house was raided by Swarthmore police and several occupants taken before Magistrate Morgan.” Perhaps the police knocked first and discussed a possible violation of the local noise ordinance. But it doesn’t sound that way.
Petitions against black people moving in may no longer circulate in Swarthmore, but the violence of racism persists.
Change is slow and hard, here as everywhere. But in our community, and across the country, many white people are reexamining their history. They are asking themselves how blatant violence and discrimination in the past lingers today in accumulations of wealth and privilege. New groups are pledging to address racism and other forms of bigotry in our schools (see article on page 1).
This June 19, I will be attending a Juneteenth observance and Black Lives Matter protest, hosted by Swarthmore’s historically black neighborhood, at 5 p.m. in Umoja Park. Next Juneteenth, I hope this newspaper will bring news of more joyful celebrations here in Swarthmore.
Rachel Pastan
Editor
