ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:

This week, on June 19, communities across the U.S. will celebrate Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 that the last enslaved people in the U.S., in Texas, learned that slavery had been abolished, that they were free. Corina Torralba Harrington always celebrated this day with her family growing up in northern Mexico.

CORINA TORRALBA HARRINGTON: We always called it El Valle de los Negros, El Dia del Negro, El Diecinueve, or the Day of the Black or the 19th. And that was, like, our celebration. I didn’t know that anybody else celebrated that.

FLORIDO: Torralba Harrington was born in Nacimiento, a tiny Mexican town near the border with Texas. She knew her ancestors and the ancestor to the many people in town were Black, but not much more.

TORRALBA HARRINGTON: You know, we didn’t really know the history.

FLORIDO: She and many there had long thought their celebration each June 19 was to commemorate the day the town was founded. But that began to change when, in 2015, she went looking for the graves of her grandparents in southern Texas.

TORRALBA HARRINGTON: When my brother and I arrived to that cemetery, we found so much more than what we thought. You know, we were like, why is it the Seminole cemetery?

FLORIDO: The Seminoles were a mixed-race community that formed when Black people escaping slavery in Southern states found refuge with Native American Seminoles in Florida. Her graveside discovery stunned her.

TORRALBA HARRINGTON: Because I didn’t even know that we were Black from the Seminoles of Florida.

FLORIDO: She set off on a journey to learn the history and her family’s ties to it. She learned that some Black Seminoles in Florida, fearing they could once again lose their freedom, kept going.

TORRALBA HARRINGTON: And they decided to come to Mexico since slavery had already been abolished there and work for the Mexican government at the borders, protecting the borders in Mexico.

FLORIDO: Torralba took trips across the South. In South Carolina, she was knocked over to hear songs she recognized from her childhood.

TORRALBA HARRINGTON: You know, the songs that they sing there, some of them are songs that we still preserve in Nacimiento. The spirituals that our ancestors sang, I was just like, this is our connection. You know, this is how we’re connected.

FLORIDO: And in Texas, where she now lives and where African Americans have long celebrated Juneteenth, she finally drew the connection.

TORRALBA HARRINGTON: I realized that the Juneteenth celebration that was celebrated here in Texas was the same celebration that we celebrated in Mexico.

FLORIDO: Her hometown celebration, she realized, was part of something much bigger. Corina Torralba Harrington now discusses with people there their connections to Black and Indigenous people struggling for their freedom.

TORRALBA HARRINGTON: Our celebration is just like a big family reunion. Everybody talks to everybody. The young kids, men, women, on horses. The food’s free for everybody. Anybody that comes can eat. We celebrate in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the United States.

FLORIDO: That’s Corina Torralba Harrington on her Mexican family’s and hometown’s connection to Juneteenth.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THIS MAY BE THE LAST TIME”)

THE STAPLE SINGERS: (Singing) This may, this may be the last time. This may, this may be the last time, children. This may…

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