Juneteenth Takes Manhattan: It’s a Celebration, Sure Enough!

Exciting as the day is or should be, New York is still catching up with Juneteenth, which President Joe Biden made a federal holiday in 2021. The city is and has been a leader of many things—Juneteenth just happens to not be one of them. The basic version is as follows:

On June 19, 1865, Wayne County, New York, native and West Point graduate, U.S. Army Major General Gordon Granger, then in Galveston, Texas, issued General Order No. 3. It began:

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection therefore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”

Though the Civil War had effectively ended with Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General Ulysses Grant at Appomattox, VA, on April 8, 1865, it was an immense country. Further, words about freedom and equality were easier to announce then to enforce, not least when President Abraham Lincoln—author of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Second Inaugural Address— was assassinated one week later, on April 15, 1865.

It’s unknown when and where the word “Juneteenth” originated. Though Granger’s order received national attention under such headlines as “Freedom in Texas,” and some various celebration followed, these were local, Black affairs, attached to the notion of “emancipation.”

The earliest printed reference to “Juneteenth” this reporter could find appeared in the Galveston Daily News of May 22, 1890. Quoting a Black newspaper from nearby Beaumont, it says:

“For Galveston to send abroad for orators for its coming ‘Juneteenth’ is like carrying coals to Newcastle. There are about as good speakers—people who know all about English as she is spoke—in the city by the sea as anywhere.”

Until the 1960s, Juneteenth would remain barely known except to Texans, including Black folklorist J. Mason Brewer, and to readers of Black newspapers like the Atlanta Daily World, the Pittsburgh Courier and especially the California Eagle in Los Angeles, which by the 1930s had a large and growing population of Texas transplants.

Read one 1939 Eagle ad, “Juneteenth will be celebrated on Central Avenue all day, with barbecue and dancing in the new and improved gardens at the rear of the Elks’ Temple, 4016 S. Central Avenue... The festivities will begin at nine o’clock in the morning and continue out of doors... until six p.m.”

In June 1952, the Eagle published a column by Civil Rights activist, writer and future NAACP President Roy Wilkins proposing a Juneteenth holiday.

“Our whole race needs a national day of celebration. Every people here in America has some such day except us,” Wilkins explained. “The Irish take over on St. Patrick’s Day. The Poles, Rumanians, Greeks, Norwegians, Swedes and Italians all have their days. The Chinese make a celebration of their New Year. The Spanish have their fiestas. Only the Negro has no national day to commemorate. And of all the people’s he needs one the most. It could a become a powerful instrument for understanding and good will.”

Angelenos meanwhile weren’t waiting. An exuberant 1963 ad for the Ben-Hur Supper Club, 3101 South Western Ave., exclaims, Black cowboy style, “YIPPEE! IT’S JUNETEENTH TIME!” as it presents John “Texas” Tucker’s Original Juneteenth Party. “Live entertainment and plenty of FREE SOUL FOOD!”

In the spirit of YIPPEE! then, a selective Manhattanite’s guide to Juneteenth 2026.

Juneteenth Celebration Parade in Harlem

116th Street between Fifth and Lenox Avenues, 11 a.m.

Though the city boasted important Black newspapers like the New York Age (one of whose writers, Alfred Duckett, would later be the co-author of Jackie Robinson’s autobiography, “I Never Had It Made”) and the Amsterdam News, migration was such that Black Texan culture—and thus Juneteenth—wasn’t really prominent here. That began to change in the late 1960s. An Amsterdam News ad for the June 1968 March on Washington mentions Juneteenth and Harlemites would be prominent among those advocating for Junteenth in the decades to come. The parade kicks off at 11 a.m. with an afternoon street fair following.

Juneteenth 4 Mile Run/Walk/Roll

Fifth Avenue and East 69th Street, 10 a.m.

Health is wealth as the saying goes and there’s no healthier way to celebrate Juneteenth than pay-what-you-can four mile running event in Central Park. Though pre-registration is closed, one can still show up and enter. Walking and stroller pushing are also fine! Besides the holiday and its affordable cost, the distance itself is cause for jubilation, neither the common 5K, many of which have become expensive in recent years, nor the once more popular 10K. Just because it’s free, however, doesn’t mean its cheap: bag check is available and photos are posted online. In the words of its organizers, “We owe it to ourselves to celebrate Black American Freedom in all of its diverse representations, including Black Health, Black Wealth, and our shared Black History. #WeOweUS.”

Juneteenth Celebration in Seneca Village

Seneca Village Site, near West 85th Street, 1 p.m.

Before Central Park was a park, it included the Black settlement of Seneca Village on today’s Upper West Side. There are ironies of this: as a journalist, Central Park’s designer Frederick Law Olmsted wrote extensively about Texas, including slaves, see his remarkable 1859 book, “A Journey Through Texas; or, A Saddle-trip on the South-Western Frontier.” This free multimedia program on the Seneca Village includes Broadway performers, musicians, including the perfectly named trumpeter, Alphonso Horne, writers and more.

Hudson River Park Ladies of Hip-Hop Juneteenth Celebration, Pier 45, 6:30 p.m.

Just so everyone knows, Pier 45 is also known as the Christpher Street Pier, meaning it’s in, or technically off of, the West Village. On foot, Christopher Street will get you there, lickety-split. The Ladies of Hip-Hop describe themselves as “an all female intergenerational dance collective that creates dance works illuminating the strength, power and diversity of women in Hip-Hop. Ever present in the work are the freestyle, cipher, and call-and-response origins of street and club dance culture, all while exploring the space of proscenium performance.” A number of the Ladies’ friends are also performing, among them KaJe Movement Collective, A Lady in the House Dance and DJ Diyana Moyet.

Juneteenth Celebration, Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

The Bronx is up and the Battery is down and in Battery Park City proper, the place to be is Rockefeller Park where the ever popular Federation of Black Cowboys will be offering free horse rides to kids ages 3 and up. Also appearing will be the Go Hard Dance troupe of Harlem. If coming by train, get off around City Hall or Chambers Street and take Murray Street west, you’ll run right into Rockefeller Park.

African Burial Ground National Monument, Reade Street and Broadway, 11 a.m.

One of Manhattan’s greatest and often overlooked museums is the National Park Service’s African Burian Ground National Monument (ABGNM). Straus News has reported often on both the institution’s numerous glories and occasional travails, the latter concerning its location, which is literally steps away from the often-protested 26 Federal Plaza, and the 2025 government shutdown which closed ABGNM and numerous other NPS sites. If not always well publicized, ABGNM events have repeatedly proven themselves well-run and inspiring, and this year’s Juneteenth program is unlikely to be an exception.