Join us on Saturday, August 5th, as we welcome Antioch’s newest park into our community. Named after the Bay Miwok indigenous tribes Julpun Park is located at 5500 Sierra Trail Way. The ribbon cutting ceremony will take place at 11:00 am.
Map showing area inhabited by Julpun Tribe of Bay Miwoks. Source: Museum of the San Ramon Valley
According to the Museum of the San Ramon Valley, “Identified in Father Narciso Duran’s topographical map in 1824, the Julpun lived in the northeastern corner of the East Bay, probably including present-day Oakley, Brentwood and some of Antioch. Thus, their land included the confluence of the San Joaquin River and lower Marsh Creek. Initially many of them moved eastward and northward into the delta rather than submit to the mission system. A few went to Mission Dolores in 1806 and Mission San Jose from 1806-1808, with 108 more entering Mission San Jose by 1813. (Author Randall) Milliken (in his book entitled, Time of Little Choice) lists a total of 141 Julpuns baptized by 1819.
John Marsh bought his Rancho Los Meganos from Jose Noriega in 1837, an area which included the Julpun’s territory; he called the Indians there ‘Pulpunes’. Julpuns may have returned to their homeland to work for Marsh after Mission San Jose was secularized in 1836.”
Following is the text of the Declaration of Independence in celebration of Independence Day, July 4th, 2023:
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
During the Antioch Juneteenth Celebration event a few years ago, I shared the fact with a few people, mainly youth, in attendance, that Juneteenth and the ending of slavery in the U.S. was the result of the efforts of the Republican Party, and some of them were shocked and even argued with me. I was surprised they hadn’t learned that in their history classes in school. So, here’s a little history about the day and celebration.
Deriving its name by combining June and nineteenth – Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day, is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. But while it became a national holiday in 2021 through a bill by a Democrat U.S. Senator and signed into law by Democrat President Joe Biden as the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, the day it celebrates occurred thanks to the Republican Party. Known as the Grand Old Party or GOP, the party was formed in 1854 to fight the expansion of slavery into the Western territories and ultimately abolish it. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican to be elected president and under his leadership fought and won the Civil War to end slavery in the United States.
Back to Juneteenth, it was on June 19, 1865 that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, a Republican career U.S. Army officer, arrived at Galveston, Texas announcing that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free.
It was two and a half years after President Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 freeing all slaves in Confederate states. Granger issued General Order No. 3 further informing Texas – the most remote state of the former Confederacy – of, and enforcing the proclamation, just two months after Lincoln’s assassination.
When issued, the Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the arrival of Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.
Later attempts to explain this two-and-a-half-year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another, is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All of which, or neither of these versions could be true. Certainly, for some, President Lincoln’s authority over the rebellious states was in question For whatever the reasons, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory.
Juneteenth has been celebrated in Texas since 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. They spread across the South and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. Participants in the Great Migration brought these celebrations to the rest of the country.
Happy Juneteenth, a holiday of freedom that we can all recognize and celebrate, while honoring those who fought and died to make it a reality!
Entertaining times are returning to the Antioch Historical Museum this June. Recalling the rollicking Roaring Twenties fun time at the pre-Covid “Funeral for a Gangster,” put on by Caught in the Act Theater in September, 2019, the Museum is bringing back the theater with their western themed mystery to solve, “Death Near Dead Man’s Holler.” Ticket holders will gather on Saturday evening at 5:00 until 9:00 p.m., June 17, 2023, in the Museum’s Riverview Room, dressed in their western finest, ready to dine on western BBQ vittles at 6:00, then solve the mystery. A no-host bar will be in the Saloon Room. There will be prizes for the best costumes and best detectives.
The early-bird ticket price of $65 ends June 4, 2023, before going up to $75. Tickets are available through Eventbrite, or by mailing a check for reservations to the Museum, 1500 W. 4th St., Antioch, CA, 94509. For further information, please call the Museum at 925-757-1326.
