Excerpt:
It takes time for anything to sink into the public’s consciousness. That has been the case of Juneteenth, which went from being an unofficial holiday to a federal holiday in June 2021.
Juneteenth is the celebration of the day when Union Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston Bay and proclaimed slaves in the state of Texas were free although Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had already declared slaves free in Confederate-held territory two years before Granger’s announcement.
Since it became an official holiday, the Town of Colonial Beach has been working on celebrating it in the same sort of manner they have reserved for their Beach Music festival and other town celebrations. Last year was a much more modest affair, and having had a year to refine it further, the folks that planned the celebration resolved to make it much bigger this year, aiming to make it sink a bit further into the public’s memory.
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