[Episcopal News Service] The holiday Juneteenth, which celebrates Black freedom in commemoration of the end of American slavery, also will serve in the Diocese of New York as the start of a “Season of Freedom” to mark the United States’ 250th birthday.
Juneteenth falls each year on June 19, and in recent years, dioceses and congregations across The Episcopal Church have marked the occasion alongside secular celebrations of the day. It dates to June 19, 1865, when Black Americans in Galveston, Texas, were notified by Union troops that their enslavement had ended with the Civil War.
Trooper Jackie Quinn, representing “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 9th and 10th Cavalry, carries the General Order No. 3 during a march reenactment in celebration of Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas, June 19, 2023. Photo:Adrees Latif/REUTERS
In the Diocese of New York, the Season of Freedom will begin on June 19 and run through July 5. A kickoff picnic on Juneteenth will be hosted at 2 p.m. Eastern at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. The diocese also is preparing to celebrate its own 250th anniversary this fall at its diocesan convention.
“As a nation we have always struggled towards the ideals the [Declaration of Independence] proclaims. The promises of dignity, equality, and freedom have existed alongside exclusion, enslavement, and dispossession,” New York Bishop Matthew Heyd said in his weekly newsletter. “For many, freedom had to be won across generations and continues to be at stake now.”
By beginning the diocese’s Season of Freedom on Juneteenth, Heyd said, it “reminds us that liberation has always been unfinished work.”
The following are some of the other Episcopal commemorations planned for this week.
Diocese of Massachusetts: St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in Boston will welcome the diocesan Office of Immigration and Multicultural Ministries and the Bishop Burgess Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians for a service celebrating Juneteenth at 10 a.m. June 19.
Diocese of Washington: Washington National Cathedral will present “An Evening with Sen. Raphael Warnock,” the Georgia senator and pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, at 7 p.m. June 19. The event will offer “a powerful conversation on faith, democracy, and moral imagination.”
Diocese of Pennsylvania: Grace Epiphany Church in Philadelphia will host a Juneteenth Jazz and Gospel Concert at 3 p.m. June 20, featuring “a program rooted in joy, history, and community.”
Diocese of Long Island: Assistant Bishop Geralyn Wolf will preach June 20 at the diocese’s Juneteenth Jubilee at 11 a.m. Eastern at Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, New York.
Diocese of Western Missouri: The Kansas City-based diocese will mark Juneteenth with an event, “Remembering the Past, Shaping the Future,” to be held 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 20 at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral.
Episcopal Parish Network: A webinar on Juneteenth is scheduled for 3 p.m. Eastern June 18, featuring the Rev. Brandon Thomas Crowley, director of theological education at Episcopal Divinity School in New York, and the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, Washington National Cathedral canon theologian.