Two events are scheduled for Washington Parish that mark the Juneteenth holiday.
This Saturday (June 15) the Washington Parish NAACP will sponsor a “Juneteenth Jamboree” in Bogalusa. The event begins with a parade in Bogalusa at 10 a.m. At noon, activities in Cassidy Park will begin and continue until 6 p.m.
The event is termed as an “Education-Inspiration-Celebration” family fun day.
The next day, Sunday, June 16, a Juneteenth celebration will take place in Franklinton.
It will be held at the Bottom Park, 703 14th Avenue.
It is free and open to the public. Organizers will have food, music, vendors, and more.
The event begins at 2 p.m. and continues through 6 p.m.
The official federal Juneteenth holiday is Wednesday, June 19. Post offices will be closed and no mail will be delivered. Subscribers to The Era-Leader who receive their newspaper via mail can look for it on Thursday, June 20, instead of on Wednesday. The normal Wednesday delivery will resume with the June 25 edition.
Juneteenth is a holiday commorating when slaves in Texas learned in 1865 that they had been freed by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The executive order actually outlawed slavery in Confederate states beginning Jan. 1, 1863, the midpoint of the Civil War. But it was not until June 14 of 1865 that slaves in Texas dound out that they were free.
Juneteenth became more prominent in 2020 due to the nationwide protests about after the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and George Floyd in Minnesota.
Juneteenth officially became a federal holiday in 2021.
