June 10, 2009
MACOMB, IL – - Western Illinois University’s Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center (GBCC) invites the community to gather for free food, music and entertainment — and to commemorate the official end of slavery in the U.S. — from 4-6 p.m. Saturday, June 20 in Macomb’s Chandler Park.
The seventh annual Juneteenth Celebration will offer free food sampling from 4:30-6 p.m. A program begins at 5 p.m. featuring live entertainment, guest speakers, praise dancers, gospel singers, and children’s activities including inflatable games, storytelling and crafts. Also available will be an informational health fair featuring free and confidential HIV testing.
According to juneteenth.com, the event marks the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers landed at Galveston, TX, with news that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were now free — two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had become official Jan. 1, 1863.
For more information, contact the GBCC at (309) 298-2220.
Copy By: Alison McGaughey
