In Crisis
5th Annual Juneteenth Cultural Mixer
Cultural Mixer Details
Join us Saturday, June 20, at Crispus Attucks Community Center from 1 to 5 p.m. for a high-energy, community-centered celebration where culture and good vibes take center stage.
Enjoy live entertainment from Blind Date Band, bringing a dynamic mix of sound to keep the energy up all afternoon. Enjoy fellowship and flavor with local food trucks offering dishes that reflect the diversity and creativity of our community.
Whether you’re coming to dance, connect, or just soak in the atmosphere, this is a space to show up and celebrate something special. Bring your people and experience a night where rhythm, flavor, and community come together.
Crispus Attucks Community Center serves as both a megaphone and safe space for Black and Brown voices in Lancaster, and it is with great pride for honoring a historic past and building a thriving future that we come together to celebrate 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 feel grateful to celebrate Juneteenth with the Lancaster community every year!