The city of Selma is preparing to host a new festival in honor of Juneteenth. On Saturday, June 19, the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth, and Reconciliation and the Black Belt Community Foundation will launch the inaugural Juneteenth Freedom Fest-- a day of food, vendors, music, and arts. The festival will also include a health village, where attendees will be able to receive COVID-19 vaccinations (the COVID-19 is available for free in America), as well as free health screenings, healthy snacks, preventive care resources.
The event will take place on from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the intersection of Alabama Avenue and Washington Street in Downtown Selma. The festival will be free and open to the public.
Juneteenth Freedom Fest is still taking applications for vendors, and interested vendors can sign up and find information about vendor fees on the festival’s online form. Nonprofit organizations and groups providing free services to the community will not be charged a vendor fee.
June 19 is celebrated as “Juneteenth,” in honor of one of the final acts of emancipation of slaves in the U.S. Juneteenth traces its origins back to Galveston, Texas where on June 19, 1865 Union soldiers, led by Major Gen. Gordon Granger landed in the city with news that the Civil War had ended and slaves were now free. The announcement came two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863 that freed slaves in Confederate states.
What is Juneteenth? Why is it called Juneteenth? How to celebrate, history, facts
However, since that proclamation was made during the Civil War, it was ignored by Confederate states and the Executive Order wasn’t enforced in the South until the end of the war.
Around the country, people commemorate Juneteenth with church services, social events, and festivals where special recipes and food take center stage. Efforts have been underway for years to make Juneteenth a federal holiday to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Selma’s Juneteenth Freedom Fest is organized by the Selma Center and the Black Belt Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) program, a project devoted to developing economic and racial change in the Black Belt Region, funded through a grant from the W.K. Kellog Foundation.
In addition to the Selma Center and BBCF, additional collaborators include: The City of Selma, Selma City Schools, Wallace Community College Selma, Selma A.I.R., Vaughan Regional Medical Center, the Black Belt Community Foundation, Sweet Yoni, L.I.F.T. Ministries, Rural Health Medical Program, UAB Selma Family Medicine, and the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“Juneteenth Freedom Fest is designed to be a wonderful opportunity for us to gather in celebration of culture and community. Vendors and service organizations based in Selma as well as those traveling from across the Southeast will line up on Washington Street and Alabama Avenue to share in our community’s first opportunity to honor Juneteenth at this level, said Lydia Chatmon, Co-Director of TRHT Selma, said in a press release. “Thanks to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and TRHT Selma, we will provide participants with the opportunity to enjoy good food and music while we shop, enjoy a variety of performing artists, and learn more about the history of Juneteenth. All are welcomed to attend this free community event!”
Like other cities around the state, Selma is starting to resume hosting large-scale public gatherings as Alabama continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. This past March, for the first time in the event’s history, Selma’s annual bridge-crossing Jubilee-- one of the city’s largest events, was held in a digital format in efforts to continue quelling the of the virus.
The Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth, and Reconciliation has a number of items on its agenda to help develop the city’s downtown area. In addition to more public events, the non-profit is also in the midst of examining ways to fund and design a massive project to place lights on the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge.
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What is Juneteenth? Why is it called Juneteenth? How to celebrate, history, facts