Juneteenth Festival

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865 as an important day in U.S. history when enslaved African American people heard about the abolition of slavery. Though the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, it took 2.5 years for word to reach as far as Galveston, Texas. Juneteenth marks the day when freedom from slavery became a reality for all African Americans in the former Confederate States of America.