Daniel S. Williams and the Art of Bearing Witness

Daniel S. Williams’s Untitled (Juneteenth Emancipation Day celebration) (1982) is a striking portrait of a young Black woman against the backdrop of a Juneteenth concert in Houston. She stands poised, offering us the gentle radiance of her eyes, adorned with blonde braids and festive red, yellow, and green beads. The surrounding landscape reveals a gathering teeming with excitement. We see generations sprawled out on the grass.

Juneteenth, or Emancipation Day, is the annual commemoration of the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans in the United States. For over 150 years Black communities throughout the country have marked the decree with vibrant celebrations and gatherings in the face of slavery’s indelible legacy. Within this single photo we encounter the holiday’s true significance—a celebration, and a call to bear witness to the beauty of a people who have defied every attempt to diminish their spirit.

This image is but one thread in a vast tapestry weaved by Williams. Long before Juneteenth came into the collective consciousness and became a national holiday, Williams had already recognized its significance. For three decades he traveled across the United States photographing Juneteenth and Emancipation Day celebrations. He immersed himself in parades, sermons, and communal cookouts, photographing candid moments of celebration, at times even bringing his children along. From bustling urban centers to rural towns, Williams captured how communities came together to honor the struggles and triumphs of their ancestors. Through his lens we are transported to rituals of remembrance and rejoicing.

Much like Juneteenth, this valuable historical and cultural archive had been hiding in plain sight. Only three of Williams’s photos had ever been acquired by museums, leaving the majority of his work unseen. Untitled (Juneteenth Emancipation Day celebration) is the sole photograph by Williams in MoMA’s collection. Our Department of Photography had little information about this image, and an outdated address for the artist. Internet searches for his name provided nothing at first glance, but further digging unearthed a video interview with Williams, and an article in The Phillipian about his extensive teaching career. Through the article I was able to make contact with his daughter Megan Paulson, who bridged the gap. Forty years after the photo’s acquisition in 1983, we now have further insight into this image and Williams’s body of work. His foresight now provides us with an unvarnished archive of Black existence.

On the occasion of Juneteenth 2023, I spoke with Williams and his two children, Megan and Peter, who shared their perspectives on this image as well as rare photos from Williams’s remarkable body of work.
—DaeQuan Alexander Collier, Content Producer, MoMA Creative Team

DaeQuan Collier: Can you share the story behind your photograph of the young lady with the braids from MoMA’s collection?

Daniel Williams: That particular photo has always stayed with me. It was taken at a park in Houston.

Megan Paulson: It’s now called Emancipation Park, named in honor of Juneteenth. It was purchased in 1872 by a group of Black community leaders and was the only park in Houston where Black people were allowed to gather.

Before you started the Juneteenth photography series, you had been working on a series about Black farmers. Could you talk about how you began photographing Juneteenth and Emancipation Day celebrations?

DW: A couple of farmers in Gallipolis, a village in Ohio, asked me if I were going to celebrate Emancipation, and I said, “What? What is that?” And they explained it to me. When I saw the festivities I immediately dropped my Black farmer project, and started photographing Emancipation celebrations. I just changed focus right away.

MP: I think, like you, Dad, many people didn’t know about these celebrations, because the reach of Jim Crow was vast. You had to keep the celebrations somewhat under wraps because if they attracted too much attention, then they would quickly be stamped out. Gallipolis, Ohio’s celebration was only missed one year since 1863, and that was because the Ku Klux Klan was so active they were afraid to hold it that year. And so it’s not until the late 1970s and ’80s that they started to become more open. Many of the communities also didn’t know what other communities were doing.

PW: One of the first things that happened upon news about emancipation was that families were formed. The whole possibility and idea of family among former slaves—all of a sudden that became possible. Something as basic as having a sibling, or a mother, or a father, or an uncle, or an auntie was now a possibility. And that was what people did immediately.

MP: It’s not that the enslaved people did not have families before. After the Civil War, there were all of these broadsides and newspaper advertisements from Black people looking for lost relatives. They are heart-wrenching.

PW: The families had been ripped apart.

MP: Exactly. I always found it interesting how a lot of the pathologies that had been ascribed to Black Americans—such as they’re not family oriented, or their family structures are inverted where the woman is the strong member, and their families don’t have strong males—were the direct results and effects of how the enslavers treated them. You can’t say this group doesn’t value family when in fact you’ve been selling away the members of their families. That always angers me to no end. So the celebrations were of family and perseverance.

Now that Juneteenth has been recognized as a national holiday, what impact do you think this will have on the ways it’s celebrated?

DW: I’m glad that’s happened. I am curious to see the ramifications of Juneteenth becoming a national holiday. The significance of what Juneteenth represents and what it’s founded around is very impactful on people’s lives.

PW: I think what’s exciting about Juneteenth becoming a national holiday is that a lot of these celebrations that have existed can now be recognized, and seen, and connected more directly with the historical precedent that created them. So instead of just being family reunions, or county fairs, they will now be able to create more awareness and hopefully dispel ignorance about the African American experience, which is really the American experience.

Recently I was reading about the commercialization of Cinco de Mayo, and how very few people understand the origins of the Cinco de Mayo celebration. I think there’s now an opportunity to not have Juneteenth become so commercial that it obscures, but rather give it an opportunity to reflect and highlight the American and African American experience.

MP: I would love for that to happen. We need to push for that to happen even more because I fear it will go the way of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which has been whitewashed, as has his legacy. Juneteenth is already commercialized. I go to Target and it celebrates Juneteenth and Pride Month. And unfortunately, the paradox in creating these national holidays is on the one hand the country is saying, “Yes, we’re acknowledging this,” but on the other hand the holiday is trying to absolve the country of its responsibility. I can see some people saying, “Why do we need to give reparations when, look, you’ve got Juneteenth?”

I think there’s something to be said about how your work captures images of Black people that are not depicting suffering. I think that is so powerful. Why did you feel the need to capture these kinds of images?

DW: The fact that they happened. And if you look beyond the pictures, we see Black people just being themselves.

MP: You know, when I was in middle school and went to an Emancipation Day celebration with dad, I actually got a bit angry. I was angry because I felt very lonely. I had friends, very good friends who are still my friends today, but I did not see other people who looked like me. I grew up feeling ugly and isolated in a predominantly white, rural, Appalachian college community. And when I went to these commemorations, I was like, “Where have all these Black people been? Why am I just seeing them now?” And I think that’s another wonderful aspect of the Juneteenth celebrations—knowing that there are more of us out there.

Megan and Peter, what does this unearthing of your father’s work and legacy mean to you? How does this speak to the legacies of other Black artists whose work may be hidden in plain sight? Is it in any way restorative?

PW: It’s exciting and gratifying to have this opportunity to present a body of work and history that my father has recorded through his documentation of Juneteenth celebrations. It’s particularly exciting now that Juneteenth has been recognized as an American national holiday, and that these celebrations have been part of American culture since the years immediately following Reconstruction. There are actual Juneteenth celebrations going on in Ghana and my father photographed images at the slave dungeons there that helped draw a direction connection to the Juneteenth celebrations in America as well. Through his images and the research that he did, there is an opportunity to show how much a part of those communities these celebrations have always been. They are opportunities for families to come together, for friendships to be renewed, and they have been going on for generations. It is not restorative.

MP: The representations of ourselves for ourselves—that’s what is invisible. We are hyper-visible when we are portrayed as the other for everyone else. Dad wanted to show us, Black Americans, to the world—in our joy, our perseverance, our continuity.

I think that my Dad’s work is emblematic of this. Dad saw these celebrations in small towns that had been happening for over 100 years and thought, “Whoa, no one has been paying attention to this. This needs to be documented.” Occasionally, as evidenced by the very fact that MoMA and other institutions of fine art have purchased Dad’s works, they are recognized. But, as with so many aspects of Black American culture, or non-mainstream culture for that matter, it is not until there is mainstream interest that their value is recognized, and then only in a very subjective way. Black culture is not recognized for the strength and beauty it holds in and of itself, but for what mainstream culture can take from it. I’m torn because in some ways I want to hold onto these very important and life-sustaining practices, events, and images because they hold meaning for our lives as Black Americans. I worry that with national recognition, Juneteenth will lose significance. I don’t think that the attention my Dad’s work is getting is restorative. It makes me think, “What took you so long?”