This Friday, June 19, Colorado is celebrating Juneteenth with joyful and free, family-friendly events taking place over several days.
The state and federal holiday commemorates the end of slavery and the promise of freedom. It marks the date June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally received word of their freedom — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
“General Granger arrives with his troops (some of whom were members of the United States Colored troops) to announce that they will enforce the Emancipation Proclamation,” said Kelly Navies, oral historian at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. “We know this wasn’t news to these enslaved people. There were channels through which they had heard about the Emancipation Proclamation, but there was nothing that they could do without the Union troops to enforce it.”
While Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, and a state holiday in 2022, Denver has been celebrating Juneteenth for more than 70 years. Celebrations in the historic Five Points neighborhood date back to 1953…