Juneteenth Celebration

Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States and is marked each year the the Corvallis/Albany Branch of the NAACP with a community-wide celebration.

A combination of "June” and “nineteenth,” Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when a group of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned that they were free from the institution of slavery—almost two-and-a-half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. As much as Juneteenth represents freedom, it also represents how emancipation was tragically delayed for enslaved people in the deepest reaches of the Confederacy.

The first Juneteenth in 1866 was celebrated with food, singing, and the reading of spirituals — and it commemorated newly freed Black people taking pride in their progress.

After being largely ignored in schools, recognition of the day has also grown in recent years, and in 2021 Juneteenth became a federal holiday in the United States.