Juneteenth: Commemorating and Celebrating African-American Freedom

What is Juneteenth?

Though Juneteenth – June 19th—is a newly minted federal holiday, many African American communities have celebrated the commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States for generations. Getting the event federally sanctioned took years of hard effort and just last year became a federally recognized holiday under the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act. 

Juneteenth is often referred to as the United States’ second independence day, but is just now becoming well known and celebrated among Americans. It wasn’t until June 19, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that the last enslaved Black people were finally informed of their freedom from their Confederate enslavers in Galveston, Texas. Since then, the observance of June 19th as the African-American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond.

Juneteenth is celebrated across the country among Black families and friends with street fairs, parades, and concerts with the most jubilant annual celebrations taking place in Texas, the celebration’s birthplace. The holiday’s southern roots means barbecues are a necessity, and red foods like strawberry pie, hibiscus tea, and red velvet cake are traditionally served as the color is "a symbol of ingenuity and resilience in bondage," according to The New York Times. 

And for anyone who isn't Black but would like to recognize Juneteenth, June 19 is a great day to honor and embrace Black culture through its art and history. Take a look at some of the resources below to learn more and celebrate, but remember that Black culture and contributions should be recognized every day, not just on Juneteenth or during Black History Month. Black history is American history. Always.

Sources: NMAAHC; OprahDaily ; CNN

Watch

LiveNation: JUNETEENTH: A Global Celebration of Freedom (Live on CNN)

A slate of Black artists and musicians is set to take the stage at the Hollywood Bowl on June 19 for an inaugural Juneteenth concert that will be broadcast live on CNN.

The “Juneteenth: A Global Celebration for Freedom,” produced by creators Shawn Gee of Live Nation Urban and Jesse Collins Entertainment, will celebrate the 157th anniversary of Juneteenth and highlight the ongoing fight for equality in the Black community.

  • Why all Americans should honor Juneteenth by Vox: Take ten minutes to learn about why all Americans should honor and celebrate Juneteenth and the overdue emancipation of enslaved Black Americans. 

  • High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America by Netflix: Watch this Peabody Award-winning series to learn about the incredible contributions that Black Americans have had on American cuisine. 

  • Becoming by Netflix: Join former first lady Michelle Obama in an intimate documentary looking at her life, hopes and connection with others as she tours with "Becoming."

  • Two Distant Strangers by Netflix: In this Oscar-winning short film, a man trying to get home to his dog becomes stuck in a time loop that forces him to relive a deadly run-in with a cop.

  • Pose by FX: Pose is a drama spotlighting the legends, icons, and ferocious house mothers of New York’s underground ball culture, a movement that first gained notice in the late 1980s.


Read

Here’s a list of Black-owned bookstores to support and shop at.

  • Juneteenth, explained, by Vox: Here’s a brief explainer on the significance of this holiday and the history behind it.

  • The 1619 Project by The New York Times: This award winning project from The New York Times has started a much needed conversation in the United States and reframed America’s history of slavery and its continued legacy today. You can buy the book (support a local Black-owned bookstore!) or read the magazine online. 

  • On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon Reed: The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native.

  • How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America Book by Clint Smith: In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

  • Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates, Jr: A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, by the bestselling author of The Black Church.

  • We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates: We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.

  • Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison: In Juneteenth, Ralph Ellison evokes the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech to tell a powerful tale of a prodigal son in the twentieth century. At the time of his death in 1994, Ellison was still expanding his novel in other directions, envisioning a grand, perhaps multivolume, story cycle. Always, in his mind, the character Hickman and the story of Sunraider’s life from birth to death were the dramatic heart of the narrative. And so, with the aid of Ellison’s widow, Fanny, his literary executor, John Callahan, has edited this magnificent novel at the center of Ralph Ellison’s forty-year work in progress—its author’s abiding testament to the country he so loved and to its many unfinished tasks.

  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year and a PEN/Hemingway award winner, Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.


Listen


Eat & Drink 

Los Angeles

…and check out this incredible resource to find Black-owned businesses in LA!


New York

  • Cafe Con Libros

  • Lichen

  • Brooklyn Blooms

  • Harlem Hops

  • Brooklyn Clay Industries

  • Byas & Leon

  • Half Moon BK

  • Brother Vellies

  • The Crabby Shack

  • t.a New York

  • BierWax

  • Peaches Hot House

  • Bed Vyne

  • Make Manifest

  • Happy Cork Brooklyn

  • Joloff

  • Cafe Rue Dix

  • Cafe Erzulie

  • Ode to Babel

  • Brown Butter Craft Bar & Kitchen

  • JUNNY

…and check out this incredible resource of Black-owned places to shop, eat, drink, and be merry in Brooklyn!


Chicago

  • Can't Believe It's Not Meat

  • Soul Veg City

  • Leaders 1354

  • Majani Restaurant

  • Healthy Hood

…and check out this resource to find Black-owned companies and businesses in Chicago!



Click here to learn more ways you can celebrate and serve Juneteenth.



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