Wacoans celebrated 161 years of freedom for Black Americans with a Juneteenth parade in East Waco on Saturday.
Waco Independent School District Superintendent Tiffany Spicer led the parade, which organizers said featured nearly 100 entries and about 1,000 participants.
“This is something that Waco has come to treasure and honor, as part of that tradition of celebration and recognition, for hard work that’s happened before us and the ongoing work that’s happening right now in the heart of East Waco,” said Rachel E. Pate, vice president of economic development at the Cen-Tex African American Chamber of Commerce.
The parade began at Heritage Square, crossed the Washington Avenue bridge and headed down Elm Avenue to the historic Paul Quinn College campus.
By the time the first participants arrived at Paul Quinn, the second group of the parade was still filing out of Heritage Square Park.
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865, when U.S. General Gordon Granger read an order in Galveston to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas.
Texans have celebrated the event each June 19 since 1866, and it became a federal holiday in 2021.
Waco’s first documented Juneteenth celebration came in 1876, when some 2,000 people marched through town to Waco Creek for speeches, food, dancing and a reading of the Declaration of Independence, according to wacohistory.org. The Waco celebration has had a resurgence in recent years.
“The parade’s grown every year but this was visibly the longest parade,” Pate said. “It kept going and it wasn’t just an increase in participants. They began bringing more extravagant entries.
“It just shows that the celebration is necessary alongside everything that we do in our community.”
Pate said Spicer’s participation as grand marshal was a highlight for her.
“For me, seeing her come and see her own students, she recognized kids from the school, they recognized her,” she said. “She saw, you know, employees and staff and people along the route that she could connect with. It was a great chance for our community to get to see our superintendent outside of school hours and being a part of the community.”
