History remembered at fifth annual Juneteenth celebration in Manteo

Ret. U.S. Navy Capt. Edward Gantt, a United States Colored Troops re-enactor, gives the keynote speech at the fifth annual Juneteenth celebration at the Pea Island Cookhouse Museum in Manteo on Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Photo by Corinne Saunders)

By Corinne Saunders

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MANTEO — The intertwining of local and national history was shared during the fifth annual Juneteenth celebration at the Pea Island Cookhouse Museum in Manteo on Thursday evening.

Juneteenth is a shortening of “June 19,” honoring the day in 1865—two and a half years after former President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation—when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and ensured enslavers would free the people they were still enslaving there.

An annual Juneteenth celebration began in Texas and spread across the country. Former President Joe Biden designated Juneteenth a national holiday on June 17, 2021.

This year marked 160 years since the first Juneteenth.

Richard Etheridge, a man born enslaved on Roanoke Island, joined the Union Army and was among the United States Colored Troops (USCT) present in Galveston in 1865, according to event keynote speaker Edward Gantt, a retired U.S. Navy captain and USCT re-enactor.

“Richard Etheridge was one of those soldiers, dressed just like I am,” Gantt said.

Troops were ordered to Texas following the Civil War, in May 1865, out of concern the relatively new state might be retaken by Mexico, but bad weather delayed their arrival until June 19, he said.

“When they arrive, they find out that the people there are still enslaved,” Gantt said.

He continued, “For some reason [when] we tell the story about Juneteenth today, we frequently leave off the fact that there were colored soldiers who were part of that initial spearhead effort to make sure the people in Texas understood that they were emancipated—emancipated by edict, and emancipated by the point of a spear.”

Etheridge went on to become the first Black keeper of a station in U.S. Life-Saving Service history. He commanded the Pea Island station’s all-Black crew, which performed high-risk rescues of people from sinking ships.

That’s a history the late Darrell Collins loved to tell, his grandson Barkley Collins said in a tribute message at the event.

Darrell Collins was the founder and president emeritus of Pea Island Preservation Society, Inc. (PIPSI)—the nonprofit that organizes the Juneteenth celebration and manages the cookhouse museum.

While most known for his fascinating retellings of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, Darrell Collins “also had another passion: The desire to make the story of Keeper Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island life-savers nationally known,” Barkley Collins said.

He added that his grandfather was “always looking for ways to unite and always teaching, even when the stories and lessons could be difficult for some to hear and to understand.”

Frank Hester, a PIPSI board member and cookhouse director, introduced Gantt at the event.

Born in Maryland, Gantt served in the U.S. Army after graduating from high school. He went on to graduate from Howard University, and then served in the U.S. Navy, where he logged over 2,000 hours flying from the decks of aircraft carriers, Hester said. Gantt then worked as a high school teacher.

The audience of about 200 was quietly attentive as Gantt spoke.

He challenged the notion that the formerly enslaved were emancipated with “the stroke of Abraham Lincoln’s pen.”

The Emancipation Proclamation applied to states “still in rebellion” and also excluded “the border states—Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri,” as well as areas where the Union had control in Louisiana and Texas, Gantt said.

But it did allow Black men to enlist, and he said 200,000 Black men enlisted in the Union Army.

“One unit was formed with men from here,” he noted.

The 36th Regiment of the USCT, formerly known as the 2nd North Carolina Colored Infantry, hailed from southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, he said.

Another all-Black regiment, the 25th, helped “put out the fire” and prevent further destruction of Richmond, the then-Confederate capital, upon the mayor’s request to the Union Army. Those same troops then went on to the Appomattox Court House.

“When [Confederate Gen.] Robert E Lee surrendered, we were there,” Gantt said of Black soldiers. “We were there, and you probably have never heard that before.”

Gantt also spoke about an influential decision U.S. Gen. Benjamin Butler made in refusing to return three formerly enslaved men, as required under the Fugitive Slave Act at the time, toward the start of the Civil War.

“These three men are now considered contraband of war,” Gantt said. “That set something in motion. That contraband decision of May 1861 by General Butler in Hampton, Virginia, would eventually expand through the Union.”

The formerly enslaved began fleeing toward Union forts, “because they know that they’ll be considered contraband of war and that the Confederates won’t pursue all the way up to the gates of the Union fort,” he explained.

The Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony, like other freedmen’s colonies, was soon after established for refugees from enslavement.

“Sadly by June 1865—and ironically when those in Galveston, Texas, were celebrating freedom for the first time—thousands who lived on the Freedmen’s Colony had been forced to leave the land they were given,” Joan Collins, PIPSI director of outreach and education, said during brief remarks at the event.

She stressed the importance of celebrating “the freedom everyone has a right to have.”

Tshombe Selby (center) sings, accompanied by Christopher Zander (left), on Thursday, June 19, 2025, at the Pea Island Cookhouse Museum in Manteo. (Photo by Corinne Saunders)

In an annual highlight of the event, Tshombe Selby sang selections ranging from traditional spirituals like “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” to more contemporary pieces.

Selby, a powerful tenor who sings at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, grew up in Manteo, graduating from Manteo High School and Elizabeth City State University.

The audience stood out of respect as he sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” alternately titled, “The Negro National Anthem,” which details the trials African Americans experienced in this country and of their prayer and hope in God for the future.

Attendees sang along and clapped during, “Oh Happy Day,” and Selby concluded with “Make Them Hear You,” as has become tradition.

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