The Town of Manchester’s Department of Leisure, Family and Recreation will host their 3rd annual Juneteenth Freedom Day Commemoration on Saturday, June 17th from 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM at the Leisure Labs at Mahoney Center, 110 Cedar Street.

This year’s event will feature musical performances by Mixed Company & Hartford’s Proud, a Black-owned vendor & food market, family activities, performances from the Black Joy Poetry Contest and much more.

Juneteenth, which refers to the nineteenth day of June, is deeply rooted in America’s history of racism, slavery & the consequent emancipation of enslaved individuals in the mid-19th century. President Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, marked the official end of slavery in the confederate states. However, it was not until two and a half years later, on June 19th, 1865, when over 250,000 enslaved people were informed by federal troops that they were free and no longer the legal property of slaveholders.

“Enslaved Black people, now free, had ample cause to celebrate. As Felix Haywood, a former slave, recalled: ‘Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes…just like that, we were free,’” NPR’S Sharon Pruitt-Young wrote. “[However], slavery did not end on Juneteenth. It was not uncommon for slave owners, unwilling to give up free labor, to refuse to release their slaves until forced to, in person, by a representative of the government.”

Juneteenth is crucial as not only a resource for remembering and honoring our nation’s & people’s past, but to also recognize and advocate in support of the continuing struggle of Black Americans for inclusion & equity. Further items such as the Pan-African flag symbolize Black liberation in the United States & honor the bloodshed in the generations-long battle for equality.

“The Pan-African flag’s colors each had symbolic meaning. Red stood for blood – both the blood shed by Africans who died in their fight for liberation, and the shared blood of the African people. Black represented, well, Black people. And green was a symbol of growth and the natural fertility of Africa,” NPR’s Leah Donnella wrote in “On Flag Day, Remembering the Red, Black and Green.”

Yearly Juneteenth commemorations have taken place throughout the country since 1865, ranging from smaller community celebrations to widespread national events. The Town of Manchester officially marked Juneteenth as a municipal holiday in late 2020, hosting their own celebration every year since.