by Larry Chowning –
The Juneteenth observance in Middlesex County was presented on Saturday, June 18.
Called the “Juneteenth Freedom Festival,” it was conducted on the grounds of Middlesex High School in Saluda and attracted hundreds of people.
The festival was sponsored by the Game Changers, Cre-ative Productions, Middlesex County Museum and Historical Society and NAACP Middlesex Branch.
On June 19, 1865 the enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned that the Civil War had ended and they had been freed nearly two years earlier by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proc-lamation.
Since then, Juneteenth has been observed by many African-Americans as a second Independence Day commemorating the end of slavery.
In 2020, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced that Juneteenth would be a permanent state holiday and in June 2021 President Joe Biden made June 19 a federal holiday, proclaiming it as a day for all Americans to commemorate the end of slavery.
