You might ask: what is Juneteenth?

Thank you for asking!

Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States.

The holiday's name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau [portmanteau is a word created by combining the sounds and meanings of two or more words] of the words "June" and "nineteenth", referring to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.

In the Civil War period, slavery came to an end in various areas of the United States at different times. Many enslaved Southerners escaped, demanded wages, stopped work, or took up arms against the Confederacy of slave states. In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all enslaved were freed by the victorious Union Army, or abolition laws in some of the remaining U.S. states. When the national abolition amendment was ratified in December, the remaining enslaved in Delaware and in Kentucky were finally freed.

Head downtown and join in the Juneteenth celebration! You won’t regret it!

[I have included a picture with a Juneteenth Prayer Breakfast at St. John Missionary Baptist Church.]