Celebrating Juneteenth with a birthday bonus

donnie L. betts stopped the party the day he came into the world on the family farm in the small rural community of De Kalb in northeast Texas.

The shindig had begun that June 19 day as the family’s annual Juneteenth celebration, marking the date back in 1865 when African Americans in Texas were officially freed. That’s when U.S. Army General Gordon Granger, backed by 2,000 Union soldiers, arrived in Galveston Bay and announced that all 250,000 slaves in Texas were now freed by executive decree. That was 2½ years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation as a tactical measure to crush the economies of Southern states in open rebellion.

Back then, in a world before Twitter, the happy news spread across Texas slowly, from day to day, horseback to horseback. “It did not all happen on one glorious day,” betts said. But eventually, various celebratory rodeos, festivals, prayer services and picnics around the country coalesced around June 19. And thus, the parties began.

And nearly a century later, just as the betts family was celebrating their ancestors’ freedom on that date, there was suddenly another reason to make merry: donnie’s arrival as the youngest of 12 children.

“I always tell my family the party started the day I was born,” betts said with a laugh. Growing up, betts’ birthdays drew upward of 200 extended family members to smoke a pig, tell stories, listen to music and eat lots and lots of pies. “My favorite is an upside down pineapple cake, so we

always had one of those,” he said.

It was only when the boy was 7 or 8 that he realized the party wasn’t (entirely) about him.

“My brother, Charles, and my uncle, John, would gather a lot of us under a tree and they would break it down for us exactly how word of the emancipation got to East Texas, and how that word spread, and how each year the celebrations would get larger and larger.”

betts is now an award-winning radio, film and theatre practitioner who for decades has been both honoring his ancestors and making a personal statement about the historic marginalization of Black Americans with the intentional lower-casing of his name. He is a Yale-trained actor, an original member of the Denver Center’s first repertory acting company in 1980 and he appeared on Broadway in “The Gospel at Colonus” as an understudy to Morgan Freeman. In 1999, betts revived a boundary-breaking radio series from the late 1940s called “Destination Freedom” through his company, No Credits Productions, in partnership with Denver radio station KGNU. The continuing series tells classic and contemporary stories of African American heroes through 30-minute radio dramas, followed by a community conversation and musical guests.

In 2020, betts was honored for his lifetime of work with the John R. Madden Jr. Leadership Award from the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts.

After a lifetime of using art as a powerful tool for social change, it meant something to betts when President Biden on Thursday signed a bill to recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday.

But not everything. Not yet.

“I think this makes clear that all the hard work people have been doing for years to spread the importance of this holiday has been heard,” he said. “But the fight for freedom continues – and this is just the next step toward real freedom.”

betts is quick to point out the oft-overlooked fact that President Lincoln applied the Emancipation Proclamation only to the 11 Southern states in rebellion. At the time, it was a largely symbolic gesture because, by then, those states were loyal to their own president, government and flag. If the union had lost the war, all those people would have remained enslaved. It wasn’t until the 13th Amendment was passed on Dec. 6, 1865, that slavery was officially abolished in the United States.

One country of two distinct minds: That sounds to betts a lot like the United States of today. In the first five months of 2021, 14 states enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote. That, to betts, is clearly a coordinated effort to make it harder for people of color to vote.

“The struggle for freedom still continues,” said betts. “Every gain we make is one step forward and two steps backward when it comes to equality for people in America.”

Happy Juneteenth birthday

Today is the third day of a full weekend of Juneteenth celebrations around Denver. betts isn’t quite ready to face post-pandemic crowds that could reach 50,000 at Denver’s Juneteenth Music Festival, so his plan was to celebrate his Juneteenth birthday weekend quietly – with a pedicure and a massage. But in keeping with family tradition, he will be spending some time talking to his grandsons about the meaning of it all.

Meanwhile, he will be announcing a new season of “Destination Freedom” in a few weeks. He’s also finishing up a documentary film called “Stop Resisting,” a look at police use-of-force and pervasive “qualified immunity” policies that protect many law officers from being prosecuted.

For everyone else, there is still plenty to do and learn and enjoy on this Juneteenth Sunday. The Juneteenth Music Festival, organized by Norman Harris III and now in its 10th year, goes from 2 to 8 p.m. with music and entertainment at the Welton Street Corridor, Charles Cousins Plaza, Five Points Plaza and Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater. Cleo’s is also where you will find panel conversations and an interactive exhibit highlighting seven decades of Juneteenth history in Denver. That’s at 119 Park Ave.

Another way to take in both some history and a tasty beer is to drop into the Spangalang Brewery at 736 Welton St. and order a “General Gordon Granger’s IPA Order No. 3.”

“Probably 100 percent of us know who the first president was. One hundred percent of us know who the last president was, for sure,” Harris told producer Xandra McMahon on an episode of the City Cast Denver podcast last week. “I think 100 percent of our country needs to know about all these things that really make up our identity today.”

Denver Gazette contributing arts columnist John Moore is an award-winning journalist who was named one of the 10 most influential theatre critics by American Theatre Magazine. He is now producing independent journalism as part of his own company, Moore Media.