3Rd Annual Juneteenth Cultural Mixer

Join us at Crispus Attucks Community Center for an evening in community to celebrate Juneteenth on Sunday, June 16, from 5-8 p.m.! It is free to join for all our neighbors and the greater Lancaster community, and will feature food and beverage, including Saucy Boy from Spring House Brewing Company; live performances by local friends; and community connection and history. We are excited for you to join us! Learn more here.

HISTORY OF JUNETEENTH

You may be familiar with the Emancipation Proclamation, in which President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 declared the millions of enslaved people in the United States to be free. But what you may not realize is that despite this order, human enslavement didn’t end for much of the country until years later.

Because word traveled slowly back then, and because many enslavers refused to obey the proclamation, Black people in deep southern states continued to be held in illegal and immoral conditions, including in Texas, where people continued to enslave humans even after the Civil War ended in April of 1865.

• June 18, 1865: Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with 2,000 troops to occupy the state on behalf of the federal government and to enforce the conditions of the Confederacy’s surrender, which included an end to slavery.
• June 19, 1865: General Granger read aloud the declaration announcing the total abolition of slavery in Texas. Juneteenth celebrations were common until a decline during the Jim Crow era, and then the holiday spread during the Great Migration, a time between 1916 and 1970 when 6 million African American families moved out of the rural Southern United States.
• 1979: Texas was the first state to establish Juneteenth as an official state holiday.
• 2019: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed into law Act 9, designating June 19 as “Juneteenth National Freedom Day,” an official state holiday.
• 2021: Juneteenth became a national holiday.

As of 2023, all 50 states and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday, a ceremonial holiday, or a day of observance, and we love celebrating Juneteenth with the Lancaster community every year!

PARTNER WITH US

We welcome you to join us in sustaining our work at Crispus Attucks Community Center, and are grateful for your support.

1. Make a donation with a one-time gift or recurring gift to sustain Crispus Attucks Community Center
2. Be a partner for Juneteenth.
3. Volunteer at the Food Pantry at Crispus Attucks Community Center every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to marketing@caplanc.org with any questions you may have!