Event
Juneteenth Celebration of Freedom
Fee:
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Description
Booker T. Washington National Monument hosts the annual Juneteenth Celebration of Freedom and Gospel Music Celebration. Everyone is invited to share in the fellowship, fun, and festivities as our community comes together to celebrate one of the most important moments in our nation’s history, the moment of emancipation.
This event celebrates the moment freedom rang out across the Burroughs Plantation, where Booker T. Washington was born, costumed demonstrators will be involved in tours. Experience emancipation through the eyes of enslaved men, women, and children, as you’re immersed in our living history reenactments.
This celebration commemorates the release of approximately four million people of African descent from the bonds of slavery after the end of the Civil War. Booker T. Washington remembered the great day of emancipation stating his mother “was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.” This life changing moment occurred between April and May of 1865.
Sadly, everyone held in the bonds of slavery did not share the same sweet story. In some areas of the country the news did not spread very quickly. For these areas, it took months. On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas to issue General Order 3. This order did what the Emancipation Proclamation intended to do in January of 1863. All enslaved Africans were freed. Celebrations erupted in Texas! This is the celebration of Juneteenth.
The day includes re-enactments of the moment of freedom, gospel music, a children's village, petting zoo, and food vendors!
Reservation or Registration: No
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