Our annual listing of Catholic (and Catholic-adjacent) Juneteenth events around the country.

By Nate Tinner-Williams | Black Catholic Messenger

The 160th anniversary of Juneteenth will be celebrated throughout the United States on June 19 as a federal holiday, giving Americans ample opportunity to honor the legacy—and eventual freedom—of enslaved African Americans.

The original Juneteenth celebrations were born from the 1865 decree, “General Order No. 3,” issued in Galveston, Texas, where the last enslaved African Americans remained for some time after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. In that same city in 1528, an enslaved Black Catholic named Esteban had been one of the first Africans to set foot in what is now the United States.