​Our Mission: To celebrate the freedom of formerly enslaved African  Americans by acknowledging their

                         history and achievements through commemorative and historical services and activities.

                               ABOUT JUNETEENTH

​Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Juneteenth independence day, is an American holiday that commemorates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas, and more generally the emancipation of enslaved African Americans throughout the former Confederate States of America, outside Native American lands. Texas was the most remote of the slave states, and the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, was not enforced there until after the Confederacy collapsed. The name of the observance is a portmanteau of "June" and "nineteenth", the date of its celebration.

At first celebration involved church-centered community gatherings in Texas. It spread across the South and became more commercialized between in the 1920s and 1930s. Often the centerpiece was a food festival. A third stage was reached in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, when the focus became the story of struggle for postwar civil rights. The 1970s saw a fourth stage, which returned the focus to African American freedom and arts. By the 21st century Juneteenth was celebrated in most major cities across the United States. Activists are pushing Congress to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday. Juneteenth is recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in 46 of the 50 states.

In the months following the Civil War, freed slaves held meetings throughout eastern North Carolina, which led to a statewide convention in Raleigh, Sept. 29-Oct. 3, 1865. Meeting at The African Church, the site of present-day Saint Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, 106 delegates from 34 of the state’s then-89 counties resolved to seek freedmen’s equal rights with whites, especially serving on juries, acting as their own counsel, and voting in elections.

African American Firsts

Raleigh's inaugural JUNETEENTH celebration

​                  "Let freedom ring"

ON LIBERTY AND SLAVERY

by George Moses Horton

- First African American author in the south to publish a book 

 - The only American to publish a book while living in slavery

 - UNC Chapel Hill is the first university in the country to name a dormitory after a slave, George Moses Horton

"Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!

How long have I in bondage lain,
And languished to be free!
Alas! and must I still complain -
Deprived of liberty.

Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief
This side the silent grave -
To soothe the pain - to quell the grief
And anguish of a slave?

Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears!
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears.

Say unto foul oppression, Cease:
Ye tyrants rage no more,
And let the joyful trump of peace,
Now bid the vassal soar.

Soar on the pinions of that dove
Which long has cooed for thee,
And breathed her notes from Afric's grove,
The sound of Liberty.

Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize,
So often sought by blood -
We crave thy sacred sun to rise,
The gift of nature's God!

Bid slavery hide her haggard face,
And barbarism fly:
I scorn to see the sad disgrace
In which enslaved I lie.

Dear Liberty! upon thy breast,
I languish to respire;
And like the swan unto her nest,
I'd to thy smiles retire.

Oh, blest asylum - heavenly balm!
Unto thy boughs I flee -
And in thy shades the storm shall calm,
With songs of Liberty!"