Juneteenth!

What is Juneteenth?

Juneteenth is a 155-year-old holiday celebrating the emancipation of African-Americans from slavery in the U.S. It is celebrated on June 19 (the name is a combination of the words “June” and “nineteenth”) because on that date in 1865, Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army landed in Galveston, Texas, and informed slaves that the Civil War had ended and slavery had been abolished.

Granger and roughly 2,000 Union soldiers were there to enforce President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which had actually gone into effect more than two years earlier, on January 1, 1863. (In fact, Lincoln himself had been assassinated a few months earlier, in April 1865.)

To Commemorate Juneteenth, Friendship Home’s Board of Directors voted to add Juneteenth as a recognized holiday for Friendship Home staff in direct support of our Solidarity Statement.

Join the Lincoln community in celebrating Juneteenth at the following events.

Juneteenth Celebration
Saturday, June 19
12-5 pm
Trago Park
2100 U St.

There will be live entertainment, food, fun for the kids, and more!

Saturday, June 26th
10 am – 2 pm
F Street Community Center
1225 F Street

There will be a black business expo, give-a-ways, free haircuts, and special guest speakers!

As part of this community, Friendship Home hopes is to dismantle the systems of oppression that enable all forms of violence wherever they occur. We hope that you will as well.

I am persuaded that hopelessness is the enemy of justice; that if we allow ourselves to become hopeless, we become part of the problem. I think you’re either hopeful, or you’re the problem. There’s no neutral place. We’ve been dealing with injustice in so many places for so long. And if you try to dissect why is this still here, it’s because people haven’t had enough hope and confidence to believe that we can do something better. I think hope is our superpower. Hope is the thing that gets you to stand up, when others say, “Sit down.” It’s the thing that gets you to speak, when others say, “Be quiet.” ~Bryan Stevenson