WELCOME TO JUNETEENTH NY

5,000+

The East New York and Brownsville Community have been a huge support in building the Juneteenth NY Festival into a community staple over the last 12 years. The first Juneteenth NY Festival held in East New York, Brooklyn hosted by George Walker Jr. organization featured Umoja Events as the community planner in 2009. Umoja Events was entrusted to carry on the celebration in 2011. By 2012 the festival featured over 1,000 attendees. Due to a rapid growth, the event relocated to Gershwin Park. Since then, year after year it continued to grow reaching over 5,000 attendees. Each year features a theme that educates the Black community on its history while creatively changing the narrative of the devastating impact of slavery. During the pandemic in 2020, we hosted the event remotely which featured over 20,000 attendees.

attended onsite in 2019

20,000+

attended virtual in 2020

WHAT IS JUNETEENTH?

Celebration of

June 19, 1865

Juneteenth is the oldest, nationally celebrated commemoration of the historical event of 1865 in Galveston, Texas which declared the ending of slavery in the United States of America. Two and a half years after the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, delivered the Emancipation Proclamation, where Black people were considered free and delivered from enslavement.

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