Alabama’s National Juneteenth Festival & Parade to be held at Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park

(Birmingham, Al) – Juneteenth is also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day. The holiday commemorates the June 19, 1865 announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas and more generally the emancipation of negro slaves throughout the Confederate South.

The annual National Juneteenth Festival will be held at Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park on Saturday June 19, 2021. The free event will begin with a parade at 9am and the community celebration in the park will start at 10:30am. Attendees will enjoy food, music, vendors, entertainment and more!

“We love celebrating our culture and educating people about our history! This has been such an awesome event for many years. Our 2021 festival promises to be bigger and better,” said Brenda Paige Ward, Alabama Director of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation of Alabama.

The National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF) of Alabama is more than 20 years old. The organization worked hard to make sure the state recognized the Juneteenth holiday. Now the NJOF works to make Juneteenth a National paid holiday. The group is always in need of volunteers and donations to support the many programs and initiatives. The National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, founded in 1994, recognizes the same colors found in the U.S. flag: red, white, and blue, showing that the formerly enslaved were and are Americans.

Here is a list of NJOF state programs and initiatives:

• Juneteenth holiday and observance

• Juneteenth education initiative

• Juneteenth medical outreach

• Juneteenth Arts and Letters Programs

• Juneteenth Community Service Projects

The mission of NJOF is "To bring all Americans together to celebrate our common bond of freedom through the recognition, observance, education and historic preservation of Juneteenth in America."