HOUSTON – Mayor Sylvester Turner and the Emancipation Park Conservancy announced details of the city’s upcoming Juneteenth celebration.
The Emancipation Park 150th Juneteenth Celebration, presented by Kinder Foundation, will feature local vendors, a resource fair, community impact discussions and national recording artists.
The event, which will run for two days, June 18-19, will commemorate Emancipation Park’s sesquicentennial anniversary and the June 19,1865, abolition of slavery in Texas, according to a release.
Though slavery was abolished in 1863, it wasn’t until two years later, on June 19, 1865, that slaves in Texas first learned of the Emancipation Proclamation, which granted them freedom. Jack Yates, three other recently freed slaves and members of the community founded Emancipation Park just seven years later.
This June will mark the second year that this date has been recognized as a federal holiday, despite being a state holiday in Texas since 1980.