Charlotte Brooks was seventeen when she was taken from her family and brought to William Neyland’s plantation in Texas. She was forced to work under the violent control of her enslaver, with no say in any part of her life.
One day, while hiding in the kitchen, she overheard something that changed everything: slavery had been abolished. Neyland knew. He had made the decision to keep it from the people he still held in bondage.
Charlotte stepped out of her hiding spot, told everyone she could find, and ran. That night, she came back for her daughter, Tempie. And before Neyland’s bullets could reach them, they were gone.
By the time Union General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, and formally read General Order No. 3 confirming the freedom of all enslaved people in the state, the news had already been spreading the way it always had among people with no power: person to person, in whispers, at great personal risk.
Freedom arrived that day. And it arrived because someone chose not to stay quiet.
Juneteenth is June 19. It became a federal holiday in the United States in 2021. But the day has never just been about what happened in Galveston. As historians have noted, it is a reminder of how far there is still to go, and a call to keep moving.
When enslaved Africans were brought to the American South, most expressions of culture were suppressed or forbidden entirely. Food was one of the few things they could hold onto, and they did, through generations of bondage, with no guarantee anyone on the other side would be free to receive it.
What is on the Juneteenth table today are the traditions our ancestors refused to let die. They protected them, passed them forward, and this is what survived.
The red drink. At every Juneteenth gathering, there is something red to drink. Red punch, hibiscus tea, red lemonade. The color carries meaning: bloodshed, survival, and in the same cup, joy. The drink itself is older than the holiday. In West Africa, hibiscus flowers and kola nuts were steeped into a crimson tea called bissap and served to welcome guests. Enslaved Africans brought that practice across the Atlantic, and over generations it became every version of red drink you see at a Juneteenth table today. If you grew up in Ghana, you know it as sobolo. In Nigeria, zobo. In Senegal, bissap. Different names, same history, same flower.
The grill. By the late 1700s, African Americans in the American colonies were the ones running the pits. Pit barbecue, slow-cooking over buried coals, was among the most gruelling work on a plantation: digging, chopping wood, butchering, and cooking through the night. It was a technique refined over decades under brutal conditions, by people who had no choice but to master it, and who turned it into something they owned. After emancipation, that same craft traveled with them across the country. The barbecue that defines Juneteenth cookouts today was built in those fires.
The rice. Waakye, the Ghanaian rice and beans dish, has been traced by food historians as a direct ancestor of Hoppin’ John, the black-eyed peas and rice dish that became a staple of Black American celebrations. The seasoning changed along the way. The roots did not.
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A significant number of Dishout’s store partners are grill restaurants. Bate Nabaya, Fouta Halal, Bravo Restaurant, YopCity, Express Halal, Africa Kine, and many more. The grill has always been at the centre of how West African communities cook and come together, and the same fire that built the Juneteenth barbecue tradition is burning in these kitchens today. Different seasonings, different names on the door, the same pride behind the smoke.
This Juneteenth, the food being cooked in these restaurants carries more history than most people stop to consider. From a kitchen in Texas where a girl chose to speak, to the pits that built a culinary tradition, to the restaurants keeping that fire going right now, the thread has never broken.
Charlotte ran so Tempie could live. That spirit did not end in 1865. Black communities are still fighting against racism, inequality, and erasure, and Juneteenth is as much a call to action today as it was the moment Charlotte stepped out of that kitchen. Remember where this started, and keep fighting for the generation that comes next.
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