By Aaron Hutcherson, Photo: Lynsey Weatherspoon/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, June 8, 2022
After I exit the highway heading to my hotel, the first business I notice is a lunch spot called Plantation Buffet. The sign slaps me in the face with irony, as I’ve traveled here to meet with Nicole A. Taylor, the author of the recently released “Watermelon and Red Birds,” the first major cookbook honoring the Juneteenth holiday. The restaurant served as a harsh reminder of Black pain, even as I was there to write about a highly anticipated book centered on Black celebrations. But for Black Americans, the intermingling of joy and sorrow is just a fact of life.
Juneteenth commemorates the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when more than 250,000 enslaved people in Texas first learned they were freed — two months after the Civil War had ended and 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The first Juneteenth was celebrated in 1866, and until recentlyhas predominantly been the realm of African Americans with Texas roots. While Taylor recalls hearing about the holiday during her time at the historically BlackClark Atlanta University, it wasn’t until a little over a decade ago, when she stumbled upon a celebration at a Brooklyn park, that she began observing the holiday herself and has done so every year since.
Now it’s a federal holiday, and this year she plans to observe Juneteenth in Athens with friends and family by hosting an event to celebrate her cookbook. Given the time and energy spent writing it, in addition to the past two years we’ve all experienced, particularly the recent targeted killing of Black people at a Buffalo grocery store, “I want to relax as much as possible,” she says. Taylor teared up over lunch just thinking about all of the trauma Black people have gone through, the pain bubbling beneath the surface. “I have to turn it off if I want to get some work done.”
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