A lecture for Hopkinsville’s observance of Juneteenth will feature guest speaker John F. Baker Jr., author of “The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation: Stories of My Family’s Journey to Freedom,” at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 14, at the Pioneers Memorial Complex, 904 N. Main St.
Baker’s book is the story of his ancestors who were enslaved at the Wessyngton Plantation in Robertson County, Tennessee. The largest tobacco plantation in the country, it covered 15,000 acres and held 274 slaves, according to the publisher, Simon & Schuster.
“When John F. Baker Jr. was in the seventh grade, he saw a photograph of four former slaves in his social studies textbook — two of them were his grandmother’s grandparents.” the publisher’s note describes. “He began the lifelong research project that would become The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation, the fruit of more than thirty years of archival and field research and DNA testing spanning 250 years.
“A descendant of Wessyngton slaves, Baker has written the most accessible and exciting work of African American history since Roots. He has not only written his own family’s story but included the history of hundreds of slaves and their descendants now numbering in the thousands throughout the United States. More than one hundred rare photographs and portraits of African Americans who were slaves on the plantation bring this compelling American history to life.”
Hopkinsville’s “Divine Nine,” representing the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities in the U.S., are sponsors of the Juneteenth event.
Juneteenth marks the day, June 19, 1865, when U.S. Gen. Gordon Granger and thousands of federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced the Civil War had ended. Their presence was to ensure all slaves would be freed. Although President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, Confederate states ignored it and the order was not enforced in the South until the end of the war.
Congress approved legislation in 2021 that made Juneteenth a federal holiday.
