Looking back at when Harlem turned out for Joe Louis – and Juneteenth
We’ve debated—even right here in these pages, this week—who owns Juneteenth, and what aesthetic the cultural expressions and yearly observances should take on because of the dispute over where the origins of the holiday lie. Does it reflect Texas, where owners of human property delayed their recognition that enslaving people in the United States was unconstitutional? Or how about the broader South, aka the former Confederate States, where enslavement was king? But certainly not up North, right?
It turns out that for more than a century since Juneteenth was first marked, New Yorkers—and Black Americans across the North and Midwest as a whole—were concurrently observing the holiday with their neighbors to the south and southwest, after learning more about the significance of the day. The AmNews has reported on Juneteenth happenings for almost a century; the earliest mention of “Juneteenth” comes in 1936, and in many instances the holiday is also noted in archives as Emancipation Day—either alongside Juneteenth, or individual celebrations incidentally held on June 19.
“Nowhere in the Southwest is Emancipation Day held with greater ardor—nowhere else in the country could there be a setting more beautiful! Emancipation Day, better known as ‘Juneteenth’ to Southwesteners, seems strange to Northern and Eastern visitors, being celebrated this time of the year,” reads our 1938 dispatch, culled from a Black wire service.
Throughout the decades prior to it being declared a national holiday, New Yorkers would mark Juneteenth with parades, concerts, community service and education. But there was one notable observance of June 19 that’s lost to New York history that, as AmNews’ news editor, needs to be briefly brought back to the spotlight to illustrate just how many ways this holiday can be acknowledged.
In our June 22, 1946 issue, we report under the headline “Joe Louis Made Harlem Holiday” on how on June 19 of that year, Joe Louis became “Heavyweight Champion of the World,” defeating opponent Billy Conn with a knockout punch in the eighth round.
Louis, the “Brown Bomber” from Detroit, was Black America’s national hero during his time in the ring, becoming not just a symbol of prime athleticism but a beacon of hope during the fight for civil rights. The June 19, 1946 parade would go down as the biggest parade in Harlem’s history at that point, with “half a million strong” attendees, we put on the front page.
“Somebody found firecrackers from somewhere and Juneteenth day, June 19th, came to Harlem with exploding firecrackers, blank pistols, sparklers, red torches, and all the paraphernalia of a real old fashioned down home Emancipation Day celebration,” P.B. Kaye wrote in his AmNews report.
Harlemites and the rest of New York saw liberation in Louis and serendipity in his performance landing on what was then becoming one of the most critical days of remembrances in Black American history. They took to the streets as free people who weren’t just a generation prior, and reminded the world that they were.
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