Booker T. Washington Park

At Comanche Crossing near Mexia on the Navasota River, Booker T. Washington Park became one of central Texas’s most important Juneteenth gathering places. Beginning in the late 1860s, formerly enslaved people met here to celebrate emancipation and the reading of General Order No. 3, and the Limestone County Nineteenth of June Organization secured the site in 1898 and expanded it in 1900. Renamed from Nineteenth Ground, the park grew with pavilions, church services, and community events, even as dams and flooding altered the landscape. Despite declining attendance, racism, and the 1981 drowning tragedy, Juneteenth celebrations continued, preserving a historic center of Black memory and community.

Texas · United States