Celebrating 150 Years Of Freedom With 2015 Juneteenth Africana Festival

On June 19^th, 1865, slaves in Galveston, Texas—the last place in America where slavery existed—learned of their freedom for the first time.

Just one month earlier at what we know today as the St. Phillips Church in Old Salem, Union troops arrived to enforce President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation there. The Union chaplain read general order number 32: “….to remove the doubt in the minds of the people of North Carolina…that all persons held as slaves are now free”.

This year is the 150th anniversary of that monumental announcement. Juneteenth —the country's longest-running observance of the abolition of slavery—continues this month in Winston-Salem compliments of Triad Cultural Arts.  

The 11^th Annual Juneteenth Africana Festival of the Triad will be held in Winston-Salem on Saturday, June 20^th from 11-6 at 5^th Street and MLK, Jr. Drive. There'll be African Dance, storytelling, exhibits, kids areas, food trucks, music and more. Juneteenth luncheon is Thursday, June 4^th from noon to 1:30 in Gray Auditorium at Old Salem Visitor Center. The luncheon speaker will be Dr. Reginald F. Hildebrand, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at UNC Chapel Hill and author of The Times Were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation. The festival's featured literary guest will be Reverend Byron Williams, author of the bestselling 1963: The Year of Hope and Hostility. 

David Ford spoke with Old Salem Museums and Gardens Director of African American Programming Cheryl Harry.