'Seeing is believing': Mitchelville celebrates 150th Juneteenth, reflects on Charleston tragedy

Exactly 150 years after the abolition of American slavery and just days after a gunman took nine African-American lives in a historic Charleston church, the country has never needed a dose of history more, Mitchelville leaders say.

Last week's massacre in Charleston cast a dark shadow over what should have been a celebratory Juneteenth event Saturday afternoon in the nation's first Civil War freedman's town.

"Our hearts are heavy today because of the tragedy in Charleston," prayed Deacon Oliver Brown, who gave an invocation. "Our hearts have been broken, and we come today for healing, that we might forgive and we might support one another through these tragic times."

As the state and country begin to cope with the tragedy, people need to seize the opportunity to try to address racial issues in an unprecedented way, said Joyce Wright, executive director of the Mitchelville Preservation Project, which hosted Saturday's Juneteenth celebration.

"We're still dealing with issues we don't talk about," Wright said. "It's a real dark hole in American history, but it's not something we can suppress anymore.

"It's time to talk in a good way, a healthy way. It's OK to talk. It's about understanding who we are."

More than 500 visitors poured over Fish Haul Creek Park on the island's north end Saturday afternoon, envisioning what the first freedman's town would have looked like when it was founded in 1862.

Mitchelville's story and that of Juneteenth, which commemorates the announcement of the end of slavery in June 1865 throughout the Confederate South, are closely related and fundamental in the history of black America, Wright said.

Exhibits around the park included a small shed with farming and building tools of the Mitchelville era and a small house similar to those that would have been built for the town's inhabitants at the time.

In front of the shed, a re-enactor portraying Harriet Tubman regaled visitors with stories of spying on Confederate camps and offering glimpses of what Mitchelville's daily life would have been like. For Cora Miller, the re-enactor who has played Tubman at the park for two years, making those stories realistic and visual helps gives people a framework for understanding history and its threads to modern America.

"Seeing is believing," Miller said. "It's a alive. It's alive again today. This happened. This was every day life. There is no cutting corners with this history."

Other exhibits included a "praise house," which would have been where residents gathered for school, prayer and community meetings. At the praise house Saturday, Marlena Smalls and the Hallelujah Singers sang and spoke about the importance of those hymns and rhythms to all modern American music.

Along the path toward the creek, other artists gathered to show off handmade quilts and traditional basketweaving.

Summerville resident Mikey Bell, 17, was displaying his paintings at a small booth for the first time. He paints African-American figures and faces with bright, vibrant colors -- using black only to accentuate the features.

Bell grew up around the world as the son of Navy electrical technician, but he is beginning to incorporate his family's deep South Carolina roots and images into his paintings, he said.

"You have to live the story to know it," Wright said of the exhibits and celebration. "It's about the bloodline that goes through here."

Now, seemingly more than ever, the people who made up the places the Mitchelville project tries to preserve need to have their stories told, Wright said.

The late state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was among the nine killed in Charleston on Wednesday night, also believed that understanding the African-American heritage of the Lowcountry is vital to understanding it as it is today, his friends said.

Only then can the state and country begin to heal the wounds underlying a tragedy like last week's, Wright said.

"It's not like it has to be in someone's book or said in a classroom or come out of a conference," Wright said. "We're doing it. It's grassroots, and it's right here."

Follow reporter Zach Murdock on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Zach and on Facebook at facebook.com/IPBGZach.

Related content:

• Sen. Clementa Pinckney carried legacy of Beaufort County's black heroes, friends say, June 19, 2015
• Reconstruction history long ignored, neglected: Are we finally ready to talk? June 12, 2015
• Making Mitchelville real: Dig unearths Hilton Head's freedmen's past, Jan. 25, 2014

This story was originally published June 20, 2015 at 6:08 PM with the headline "'Seeing is believing': Mitchelville celebrates 150th Juneteenth, reflects on Charleston tragedy."