“Asheville: Slavery to Freedom,” a teach-in with story and song, April 26

Local social and civic organization Date My City hosts the event “Asheville: Slavery to Freedom” on Sunday, April 26. Described as “a teach-in with story and song,” the observance remembers April 26, 1865, when Union troops helped newly freed slaves in Asheville find save passage out of Western North Carolina.

Press release from organizers:

When we think about the liberation of American slaves, we tend to think about Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which was made official January 1, 1863.

And when we think about celebrating slave liberation, most people defer to Juneteenth, which commemorates the last slaves who were freed in America almost two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth specifically observes June 19 1865, when Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and the enslaved were now free.

Asheville’s slave liberation recants a similar narrative! Two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union Army of General George Stoneman, led by Brigadier General Alvan Gillem, approached Asheville on April 23, 1865. After signing a truce with the home guard, the General led 2,700 troops and hundreds of newly freed slaves, along the Main Street of Asheville (now Biltmore Avenue). As they proceeded to leave town on April 26, the troops were joined by newly freed slaves from Asheville who sought safe passage out of the mountains to a new life elsewhere.

The Juneteenth celebration is one of the oldest slave liberation celebrations in America with activities ranging from rodeos, fishing, barbecuing and baseball to guest speakers, prayer services, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, historical reenactments and Miss Juneteenth contests.

Asheville’s observance is a new – this Sunday at 5 pm the UNC Asheville Center of Diversity Education and Date My City will hold a teach-in at Pack Square to look back on this day 150 years later, acknowledging the slave liberation in Asheville. Scholars will be on hand to share what they know of the events that took place a century and a half ago, and soul-stirring songs and poems will be rendered to blanket those historical stories with the spirit of that jubilant escape from years of captivity!

This liberation of enslaved blacks in Asheville by the Union soldiers is a complicated history for most. Rather than being remembered as an “Army of Liberation,” historical markers refer to April 26, 1865 as “Stoneman’s Raid,” with a focus on the ransanking of the community by the soldiers as they exited the area. That is the kind of messiness that history, and heritage, require us to face.

We hope to see you this Sunday, April 26, 5 pm at Pack Square, as we commemorate history and take a glance at current initiatives to reverence this formerly silent history in our public spaces.