New Britain Celebrates Juneteenth

New Britain celebrated Juneteenth on Wednesday with the city’s 2024 Juneteenth Freedom Festival in downtown New Britain.

The event was hosted by the city Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and Mayor Erin Stewart, and included the raising of the Juneteenth flag in Central Park in front of city hall.

The event included a free community cookout, live music and tabling by local organizations.

The city event was the final of four “Passport to Freedom” events in a series.

The “Passport to Freedom” events began with the New Britain Museum of American Art’s 23rd Annual Juneteenth ”Access for All Community Day” on Saturday.

On Monday, the New Britain Black Ministerial Alliance hosted a Gospel Concert celebrating Juneteenth.

On Tuesday, Gallery 66 held the Opening Reception for its “Freedom Proclaimed” Exhibition, with an Artist Talk with Pierre Sylvain.

Alongside numerous other community events, such as at the New Britain Public Library, with the “Passport to Freedom” series, the New Britain community is celebrating when slavery was finally ended in Texas by the force of arms of federal troops, well after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Juneteenth is a national celebration of the end of slavery, won by the victory in the Civil War. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, says that, when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863,

not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth,” by the newly freed people in Texas.