Photo courtesy of the mural artist, Reginald Adams
“My grandfather always told me that it wasn’t a piece of paper that freed the enslaved people of Texas,” a childhood friend of Sam Collins’ grandmother, Attorney Fay Williams, once told him. “It was the men with the guns.”
Born in Galveston, raised in Hitchcock, Collins grew up celebrating Juneteenth with his family. He knew the story—how General Gordon Granger came into Galveston with his troops, two and a half years after Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, to announce and enforce General Order No. 3: “All slaves are free.”
“There are all these myths around Juneteenth, around why the slaves of Texas got the news so late,” said Collins. “People say the messenger got killed, things like that. No, the news was not late. It was in the newspapers. In Texas, there was never any intent to abide by the law, to free their slaves. If those soldiers hadn’t shown up, they never would have stopped.”
There is a part of the story that Collins never knew, though, until fairly recently. Those men with the guns? They looked like him.
“I knew that there were Black soldiers who helped win the Civil War,” he said. “But no one told us that seventy five percent of the forces that came into Texas were Black soldiers.” According to an 1866 report by General Phillip Sheridan, General Gordon Granger was accompanied by 6,500 white soldiers and 19,768 United States Colored Troops on his mission to free the last of the United States of America’s enslaved. “That part of the story never gets told, even by people who value Juneteenth,” he said. “Those men were true freedom fighters, true patriots.”
A financial advisor by trade, Collins has been active in the preservation community for years, working with historical organizations that include the Hitchcock Heritage Society, the Galveston Historical Foundation, the Galveston County Historical Commission, the Texas Historical Commission, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation—of which he currently serves as a board member. In all of his endeavors, Collins has championed efforts to tell the full story, to challenge the accepted narratives of our history insofar as to encourage more nuanced understandings of where we come from—especially when it comes to the history of slavery.
Hoping to gain more recognition of Juneteenth holiday’s significance, in 2012 Collins worked to raise funds, in collaboration with the Galveston Historical Foundation, to create a historical marker at the corner of 22nd Street and The Strand in downtown Galveston—the former site of the Union Army headquarters, and where General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3. The marker was placed in June 2014.
Six years later, in the wake of the nationwide George Floyd protests of 2020 and the accompanying rise of conversations around race, history, and Juneteenth itself—Collins decided to go one step further. In November of 2020, he and Juneteenth Legacy Project Committee Co-chair Sheridan Lorenz established the Juneteenth Legacy Project (J19LP) nonprofit, introduced with the unveiling of a five thousand square foot art installation titled “Absolute Equality”.
Situated on the same corner as the historical marker, at the site considered “the heart of Juneteenth,” the mural can’t be missed. While Collins and I talked in front of it, pedestrians—locals and weekend visitors alike—stopped every few minutes to study it. World renowned for his public art projects—which include the four mosaic monuments in Houston’s Emancipation Park—artist Reginald Adams designed the mural to present, through “portals,” pivotal moments along the historic journey to “absolute freedom” for Black people in America.
The first set of portals establish the African in the new world, honoring Esteban—a slave who accompanied Spanish soldier and explorer Andres Dorantes de Carranza aboard the Panfilo de Narvaez expedition along the Gulf Coast in 1528. Coming ashore on Galveston Island, he is today considered the first African American, first Black Texan, and the first nonnative to enter what is now Arizona and New Mexico. Behind Esteban’s arrival are depictions of enslaved Africans being marched onto ships, and a map illustrating the global routes of the transatlantic slave trade. Leader of the Underground Railroad Harriet Tubman extends an arm out to the viewer, guiding the formerly enslaved along the dangerous path to freedom in the late nineteenth century. Against the backdrop of the American flag, Abraham Lincoln reads out the Emancipation Proclamation, while behind him United States Colored Troops march into battle. Most prominently, General Granger sits, issuing General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, flanked by the Black soldiers who would deliver the message to the people of Texas.
The story continues, the mural suggests, as Americans continue to march onward towards that ideal of “Absolute Equality of Rights” described in General Order No. 3. In the last major portal, a tableau of silhouettes—man, woman, child, of all ages and abilities—walk into the future, wielding the Juneteenth flag. Behind them, Galveston’s iconic Hotel Galvez nods to the island herself, and from above, an astronaut looks out over some unknown planet, representing humankind’s ongoing quest for betterment.
Through the Juneteenth Legacy Project, Collins hopes to encourage Galveston—and by extension Texas, and then by further extension the entire nation—to value this part of our country’s history.
“The nationwide inclination to avoid the uglier parts of our history has allowed this story to get buried, said Collins. “But I feel that it’s a missed opportunity,” he said. “Juneteenth for me is less about enslavement as it is about freedom and opportunity. It is a day of celebration, and it should be for the entire country, because it was the first day that we could all say that we are free. Heck, if we do it right, we could celebrate freedom from June 19 through July 4. And you know, Galveston can throw a party.”
Beyond celebrating the aspiration of true and absolute freedom in our country, the Juneteenth Legacy Project also hopes to create a more prosperous society by telling the whole story, said Collins. “I hope that absolute equality will represent equal opportunities for all, for everyone to have equal opportunity to become their very best self,” he said. “When you are your best self, your family will become its very best family. Your community will become its very best community. Our country will become the very best version of America, and our world will become a better world.”
Heading to Galveston?
Check out our travel guides:
Our Island: Why Our Family is a Galveston Beach Kind of Family, and Why Yours Should Be Too
Thank Goodness for Galveston: Five Ways to Experience the Island, For Each Variety of Vacationer
The Argument for Galveston: Step Off the Beach and Into History
