Triad Cultural Arts’ Annual Juneteenth Festival will take place on Saturday, June 18, 2022, at Innovation Quarter — Biotech Place from 1 – 5 pm and Bailey Park from 1 – 8 pm. Our theme for this year is Celebrate Freedom & The Will to Be Free with a focus on African American Healing Rituals & Traditions.
The Juneteenth Festival brings together over 6,000 people from diverse community groups and backgrounds for a day of arts, entertainment, and education. We utilize both Bailey Park (outside) and Bio Tech Place (inside) for festival activities which allows increased opportunities for organizations, vendors, and performers to engage with their current customers and reach new audiences.
About Juneteenth
Triad Cultural Arts, Inc. is proud to sponsor Juneteenth, a celebration of the country’s longest-running observance of the abolition of slavery. It commemorates the day when those enslaved in Galveston, Texas, the last geographic area in America where slavery existed, learned of their freedom on June 19, 1865. Union General Granger read General Order #3, that “all slaves are free.” Slavery ended about a month earlier in North Carolina when Rev. S.G. Clark, a Union Cavalry Chaplain, came into the African Moravian church in Salem (now Winston-Salem) on Sunday, May 21, 1865, and read General Orders #32 that proclaimed that “all persons held as slaves are free.” As Texans of African American descent have migrated across the United States and settled elsewhere, they have taken the observance of Juneteenth with them. More and more descendants of slaves in other states are joining in the celebration and seeking in some instances to make the holiday a legal one in their respective states.
