Juneteenth is Coming!
American Canyon is prepping for its fourth Juneteenth celebration on Sunday, June 15, at Main Street Park.
Collaborating with the American Canyon Arts Foundation, the city’s celebration will include live performances, street vendors and several speakers. Starting at 1 p.m., the event will be a joint Juneteenth-Father’s Day bash to celebrate the country’s essential history as well as celebrate all the fathers and their bad jokes.
“The main thing about the event is, it’s free,” said Brenda Knight, the event coordinator. Knight, along with the arts foundation, have coordinated five hours of entertainment to celebrate not just black history, but American history.
Two years after Abraham Lincoln’s famous emancipation proclamation, 2,000 union soldiers arrived in Galveston Bay Texas, on June 19, 1865. On that day, the army announced that those 250,000 enslaved men, women and children were hereby free. The celebration honors their memory and acknowledges their long wait for freedom.
“We have to continually celebrate our freedom,” Knight said. “You become stronger by knowing the shoulders you stand on.”
Celebrating history together is something that Knight wants to underline with the event. For her, it’s a chance to meet neighbors, to bring in people from all around the region, support the community and learn about our country’s history.
The city of American Canyon will fill the park with the sounds of blues, jazz, gospel, funk and hip-hop music from artists such as Deedee Simon and Nzuri Soul and many other talented acts. Along with live entertainment, there will be food trucks and other vendors selling hot dogs and merchandise.
“Music brings people together,” Knight said. “What I’m hoping is that this becomes a destination celebration.”
Knight said this is a chance for the city to celebrate and to honor those who came before us. Otherwise, if the community doesn’t come together to remember, those who have fought, died, and bled for us, will be forgotten.
“That’s why I love doing this Juneteenth celebration,” said Knight. “Because it’s such a touching opportunity to remember.”
This is the 160th year of Juneteenth, but the holiday as we know it wouldn’t exist without people like Opal Lee, a retired teacher who throughout her life advocated for the day to become a federally recognized holiday. In 2021 President Biden signed senate bill S. 475, making Juneteenth a federal holiday, thanks to her effort. In 2024, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and gave us these words of wisdom: “We’re not free until we’re all free.”
