Juneteenth - A Celebration for All

In honor of this year’s upcoming Juneteenth Festival of the Carolinas in Charlotte, we have invited two very special guests to speak about the significance of this holiday and how it is shaping modern culture

Joining us today is Pape Ndiaye, a Senegalese immigrant and the owner/operator of House of Africa, an amazing  art gallery and shop with locations in Charlotte and New York. In addition to running his shops, Pape is the founder of Charlotte’s Juneteenth Festival and has been its lead organizer for over two decades.

We also talk with Charlotte historian and the author of “Sorting Out the New South City” Tom Hatchett, who provides some additional depth and perspective on the growth of Charlotte and the impact of Juneteenth celebrations on the city and the outlying areas.

History of Juneteenth

On September 22, 1862 President Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order called Proclamation 95, otherwise known as the Emancipation Proclamation. One January 1, 1863, this proclamation went into effect, officially changing the legal status of over 3.5 million enslaved Africans and their descendants in the confederate states to free. This news was slow to spread, however.  It wasn’t until two and a half years later that Major General Gordon Granger landed in mid-June in Galveston, Texas, and shared  that the war had ended and that all slaves were now in fact free. And it is this date, June 19, 1865, that represents the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States, popularly known as Juneteenth.