OAKLAND — The country was still six decades away from recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday when Barbara Lee first moved from El Paso, Texas, to Southern California, where she had to petition the NAACP to help her become the first Black cheerleader of her high school.
San Fernando High School cheerleader Barbara Tutt, now Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, in the 1964 yearbook photo. When Lee first moved from El Paso, Texas, to Southern California, she had to petition the NAACP to help her become the first Black cheerleader of her high school. (Courtesy of San Fernando High School)
“It was a shock coming to California thinking that all was cool for Black people,” Lee recalled with a laugh during an interview this week. “There were the same problems of systemic and institutional racism.”
But that shock turned to “a big relief” when Lee arrived as a Mills College student in Oakland, where now “there was a community that would offer me support for the rest of my life,” she said.
The historic political legacy she began building here has culminated — full circle — in the 78-year-old East Bay progressive icon becoming the first Black woman to serve as the town’s mayor, a title that resonates even more as the city prepares to celebrate Juneteenth.
The day slaves in Texas learned they were free — following the governor’s decision to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation — came 156 years before former President Joe Biden declared it a nationwide holiday in 2021. The latter was another moment in history for which Lee, then a longtime congresswoman, was present.
Lee remembers early Juneteenths in her household as church celebrations, followed by cookouts in the park — “you know how barbecues are in Texas,” she quipped. At her swearing-in last month, the mayor also recalled how June 19, 1865, preceded her grandfather’s birth in the state by about two years.
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Amid a painful few years of economic struggle and crime in Oakland, the holiday has also at times been characterized by fresh trauma, including from two separate incidents of gun violence during Juneteenth celebrations at Lake Merritt in 2021 and 2024.
The shootout last year left 14 wounded, only for headlines to be dominated the next morning by FBI raids at the home of then-Mayor Sheng Thao, a criminal investigation that shrouded Oakland in a political darkness, leading Thao to be ousted by voters and eventually charged with felony corruption.
Juneteenth, though, simply matters too much in Oakland to be brought down by negativity.
“For some folks that are stuck in a doom loop media narrative, maybe for them it’s a deterrent,” said Durell “D.C.” Coleman, a longtime radio host planning Lakefest, a Saturday concert festival at Lake Merritt. “But as far as I know, from people who are Black and in Oakland, we’re outside on Juneteenth.”
Lee, elected in April, must now lead a city that has always held itself to high standards of racial justice and other progressive ideals, but which has faced deep financial woes and crime problems in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic.
She also is at the helm of an Oakland changed by rising housing costs, where the Black population fell from 47% in 1980 to 21% today, per official Census data.
“When you look at the wealth gaps, the higher poverty rates — those legacies and vestiges of being enslaved are manifested here in Oakland and everywhere in the United States,” Lee said.
Lakefest, the Saturday concert event, is expected to bring thousands to Lake Merritt, recalling past festivals in the 1990s that highlighted Oakland’s free-spirited multiculturalism before police crackdowns and anti-cruising laws put a stop to all the fun.
The infamous “BBQ Becky” incident in 2018 — where a white woman called the police on a group of Black men tending an open grill on Lakeshore Avenue — gave way to a movement for legacy Black Oaklanders to “reclaim” the lake, even as some neighborhoods around it continue to welcome younger, wealthier transplants.
Juneteenth itself helps reflect how American labor economics are closely intertwined with race, having marked the beginning of a Reconstruction era that shaped a newly post-slavery society.
“There were systems that needed to be put in place, with this mobilized population suddenly departing from the South and moving into industrialized spaces,” said Miles Dotson, who helped organize a sold-out Juneteenth event Thursday at the Oakland Museum of California. “It literally changed the picture of our country.”
The third annual museum event, called Hella Juneteenth, will feature interactive exhibits about the country’s racial history, as well as an installation sponsored by the new Golden State Valkyries basketball franchise.
Lee will make the rounds Thursday at Juneteenth celebration in the Bay Area. The new mayor has made a number of public appearances but so far lent only a supportive voice to major policy decisions playing out at City Hall.
For now, she is a walking testament to historical progress, her decorated career having begun with volunteering for the Black Panther Party as a college student in Oakland.
Lee’s grandfather, the one born two years after Juneteenth 1865, was also the first Black man to work as a letter carrier in Texas, which she knows from seeing photos of him riding horseback.
The mayor’s maiden name, Tutt, is a legacy Black lineage in El Paso, where the Black population remains a nearly unchanged 3% or 4% in the time that Lee has been alive.
Barbara Lee’s father, Garvin Alexander Tutt, served as a lieutenant colonel in a segregated army battalion during World War II and Korea. Lee talks about the discrimination that her father faced when he tried to purchase a home in San Leandro. (Courtesy of Barbara Lee)
Barbara Lee’s mother, Mildred Parish Massey in a college age photo from the 1940s. Massey was one of the first kids integrated into the El Paso schools, the community where Lee grew up. (Courtesy of Barbara Lee)
And the family is deeply connected to the country’s troubled racial history: Lee’s mother, Mildred Parish Massey, was one of the first kids integrated into the El Paso schools, while her father, Garvin A. Tutt, was a lieutenant colonel in a segregated Army battalion during World War II who once was rejected from buying a San Leandro home over his race.
Lee faces many questions in a shortened mayoral term, one that Thao had expected to fill until after the 2026 election. When it comes to Juneteenth, though, Lee is as much the mayor as she is one of the country’s storied champions who found a home in Oakland.
“This is a day of peace,” she said, “when people got to go on with their lives.”
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at [email protected].