Juneteenth celebration planned by Washington branch of NAACP
The Washington Branch of the NAACP’s Juneteenth celebration will be held from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at St. Paul AME Church parking lot, Highland Avenue, and in the adjacent Highland Ridge Park.
The event will include food, music, games for children and adults, face painting, a vendor, and other activities.
Juneteenth is the annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States after the Civil War.
“We’re going to have a very nice celebration,” said Dr. Andrew Goudy, president of the NAACP Washington branch. “There are a lot of people who don’t know significance of Juneteenth – when the last slaves in Texas were freed – and it’s up to us to get the word out.”
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring more than three million slaves living in the Confederate states were free. But more than two years passed before the news reached African Americans living in Texas. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed the state’s residents that slavery had been abolished.
Juneteenth has been celebrated by African Americans since then, and in 2019 it was declared a state holiday in Pennsylvania. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
The holiday’s name is a combination of “June” and “19th” in recognition of June 19, 1865, the date of the announcement by Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.
“It also goes by many other names, Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, and it is indeed a celebration,” said Goudy.
Additionally, students from the LeMoyne Community Center will participate in the Grand Jubilee Juneteenth Parade in Pittsburgh at 10 a.m. Saturday, where they will be a part of the CNX float.