NATCHEZ — A day of historical significance for many will pass this week with little fanfare in Natchez, and that’s the way it should be, several area history buffs are the first to say.

Juneteenth — the commemoration of June 19, 1865 — is a celebration of the abolition of slavery, a freedom day.

But the date has no historical significance in Natchez, said Darrell White, the director of the Natchez Association for the Preservation of Afro-American Culture.

Word of the government-promised freedom — the Emancipation Proclamation signed on Sept. 22, 1862 — came to slaves in the Natchez area on July 13, 1863, instead, White said. That was the day Ulysses S. Grant’s troops made it down from Vicksburg.

It wasn’t exactly a time for celebration either, since the war raged on.

“Things were still kind of rough around here then,” he said.

Traditional Southern celebrations of Juneteenth honor the day slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom from Union troops.

Natchez has celebrated Juneteenth on or near June 19 for many years in the past, though celebrations fizzled in recent years.

Natchez resident Royal Hill, who was a member of the committee that headed up the local Juneteenth celebration for 16 years, said he and the other committee members saw the celebrations elsewhere and thought it would be important to remember the significance of the date in Natchez.

“If you have ever been to Texas, they have a very thriving and historic celebration of the event, and looking at that we thought we would start that celebration here in Natchez,” Hill said.

As time progressed, however, the celebrations became smaller and smaller, though not by choice.

“Several of our committee members passed on or moved away, and so the zeal of a couple of folks didn’t translate into the putting forth of these efforts,” Hill said.

Friends of the Forks of the Road Coordinator Ser Seshsh Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley participated in those events, but he does not want a Juneteenth celebration brought back to the Miss-Lou, but rather a “July Juneteeth” celebration.

“Promoting the Texas Juneteenth legacy neglected and overlooked the freedom of our own foreparents and ancestors,” Boxley said. “It also didn’t allow the celebration to accurately educate people on the explanation of Juneteenth in our area.”

Boxley refers to the summer of 1863 as the “summer of freedom.”

“I call it the summer of freedom, because of the amount of self emancipated persons that ran away to freedom in the summer of 1863 on both sides of the river, from Vicksburg to Baton Rouge,” Boxley said.

Another myth about Juneteenth, Boxley said, is that slaves in Texas were not freed until June 19, 1865 because slaves in Texas did not know about the proclamation.

“The history annals are full of situations, even in Natchez, where ‘slave-masters’ forced enslaved people to take flight to Texas and western Louisiana to prevent them from escaping to freedom,” Boxley said. “You cannot tell me that those slaves did not tell other slaves in Texas of the proclamation.”

The real reason slaves were not freed until June 1865, Boxley said, is because the Union Army had little success in enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas before the end of the war.

One of the misconceptions about Juneteenth, Boxley said, is that Juneteenth signaled the end of slavery.

“That’s not true at all,” he said. “The 13th Amendment is what eliminated slavery.”

Boxley said there were sections of Mississippi and other parts of the South that were exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation.

“(Juneteenth) is sold today as the end of slavery, which is not true,” Boxley said. “It’s also sold as the oldest celebration of the end of slavery, which is also not true. Emancipation Day, Jan. 1, 1863, is the oldest celebration.”

The misconceptions about Juneteenth, Boxley said, are similar to the misconceptions about Cinco de Mayo.

Cinco de Mayo is not a national holiday in Mexico and is regionally celebrated in Mexico, mainly in the state of Puebla, and across the U.S. with parties and celebrations, similar to Juneteenth, Boxley said.

“(Cinco de Mayo) has become a day of beer and fun, and, in my opinion, so has Juneteenth in many ways,” Boxley said. “Since there is not much in the way of holidays in the African-American community, I think Juneteenth has become a catch-all celebration across the country in the African-American community.”

Previous Natchez celebrations of included celebratory activities around town, but it also included a pilgrimage to a local site hallowed by its connection to a painful past — the Forks of the Road, the location of the South’s second largest slave market.

“We would have a libations ceremony at the Forks of the Road, and that was one of the most touching, most reverent parts of our celebration, where we would actually give libations in homage to our ancestors who night have been bought and sold there,” Hill said.

This year, in conjunction with the National Park Service, Hill said he’s hoping for Juneteenth to make a comeback. Culinary historian Michael Twitty did a cooking demonstration using local in-season ingredients in connection with the celebration Saturday, the Melrose slave cabins were open for tours and a genealogy lecture was given. A nutrition workshop was offered at the Alcorn Farmers’ Market.

“We are hoping we can leverage this activity,” Hill said.

“Juneteenth is not the ownership of one committee, and you can celebrate it in your backyard or with other friends, but it is a collective celebration, and that is what we are looking to do, make it a community, collective celebration,” Hill said.

That collective celebration can be in June, or in July.