Description
Friday June 20, 2008-Saturday June 21, 2008
For the past eight years, members of Albemarle-Charlottesville and neighboring communities have enjoyed participating in a unique historical celebration. Dating back to 1865, Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery. It was on June 19th that Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. (Note that this was two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.)
