Events

The 13th Annual Juneteenth NY Festival - one of New York’s biggest and longest-running annual events commemorating America’s newest federal holiday – returns for a three-day celebration, kicking off virtually on Friday, June 17th and then for in-person gatherings in Brooklyn on Saturday, June 18th and Sunday, June 19th. The Juneteenth NY Festival was created in an effort to advance the economic and cultural arts in underserved communities and in support of small, Black-owned businesses. With this year’s theme spotlighting “Unity in the Black Family Unit,” the weekend will feature the best in Black culture and will include an array of live performances, exhibitions, authentic local cuisine, wellness and other family fun activities.

On Friday (June 17), the Festival launches with a day of virtual offerings including a series of panel discussions centered around building up health and wealth within the Black family and in the Black community. Panels will be led by Sun River Health, Liv

SAY THE WORD ‘REPARATIONS’

          On Friday, June 17^th, the People’s Organization for Progress will host its annual Juneteenth March for Reparations.

          Participants will rally at the Lincoln Monument at 12 noon.

          This is the second year that P.O.P. is co-hosting this march with the NJ Institute of Social Justice (NJISJ) and a host of other organizations.

          Last year, Juneteenth was declared a national holiday. Juneteenth is a celebration to mark the end of slavery in Texas in 1865. That state’s slaveholding class withheld the end of slavery  with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 from its Black population. It was not until Union troops effectively occupied Texas at the end of the Civil War that that state’s Black population was emancipated on June 19, 1865.

          In recent years, Juneteenth has been embraced by AfricanAmericans nationally as a day to celebrate the end of slavery and to unite on the call for Reparations.

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