In an appearance on CBS This Morning, Tina Knowles-Lawson revealed that her famous singing daughters Beyoncé and Solange have “always” celebrated Juneteenth.
Juneteenth is this weekend, and celebrations have already begun across the country. In partnership with Facebook, Knowles-Lawson is set to “honor the day” and “highlight its importance with special programming and initiatives across Facebook platforms.” In an interview early Wednesday, she opened up about the holiday, her partnership with Facebook and what the occasion means to her.
Revealing that she grew up celebrating Juneteenth, Knowles-Lawson shared, “It was a day that you went to the beach; a lot of people don’t realize that Galveston (Texas) is an Island, and everything is centered around the beach.”
“When I got older, ” she continued, “I was able to go to Houston to Emancipation Park, and they have big beautiful parades there … we’ve always celebrated; it’s always been a very important holiday.”
Knowles-Lawson said she was surprised, upon moving to California, to find that it wasn’t widely celebrated. “I wanted to have a Juneteenth celebration,” she said, “and my friends were not aware that we found out two years later about the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln had signed.”
“There’s a lot of history that’s kind of been hidden,” she said, “and a big part of that is that there were by 1866, there were 19,000 black soldiers that fought for our freedom as well. And I think that’s important for us to know because we’ve been told differently. And it’s just one more thing of how the vital part that we played in the history of this country and helping to build this country has been changed. Everyone needs to know the truth.”
She went on to speak on the joy she had raising Beyoncé and Solange, sharing that her “honor” as a Black person is something she wanted to impart to them.
“I absolutely always knew that it was an honor to be a Black person,” said Knowles-Lawson. “This is what my parents taught me. We should have pride and just feel very honored by that. And so I was careful to impart that message to my children as well, to surround them with African American art and images that they didn’t obviously see on TV or around as much as they should have.”
“That’s up to us parents,” she maintained, “to impart that knowledge to our children and pass it on. My kids celebrate the 19th of June. They always have, and they always will.”
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