Marblehead Juneteenth Celebration Set For Abbot Hall Lawn

MARBLEHEAD, MA — Marblehead will celebrate Juneteenth with a program of music and speakers at the Abbot Hall Lawn on Wednesday.

The program will include poetry, music and speakers.

The Marblehead Task Force Against Discrimination and the North Shore Juneteenth Association will present the ceremony starting at 4:30 p.m.

Greg Coles Dance & Drum will provide African drumming and storytelling, North Shore Juneteenth Association founder and president Nicole McClain will read an introduction, Veterans Middle School student Damilola Graciella Olabisi will recite a poem, Rev. Andrew Bennett will provide a reflection and Tanya Crowell will sing "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

Marblehead High teacher Candice Sliney and Glover teacher Diane Gora, along with MHS student representatives Celia Sliney and Helina Tadesse, helped coordinate the event.

The national holiday commemorates the day in 1865, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, when word finally reached the last enslaved people in Texas that the Civil War had ended, and they were free.

Also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day and Jubilee Day, Juneteenth is the oldest-known celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation making it a federal holiday, the first since the addition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

Related: What Is Juneteenth? Celebrating The End Of Slavery

Because Juneteenth is an official U.S. holiday, banks, federal offices and post offices in Massachusetts will be closed Monday.

Town offices in Marblehead will be closed as well.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)