Acadia joins national parks and communities across the nation to commemorate Juneteenth, which celebrates the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States. A local celebration will be held at Knowlton Park in Ellsworth, ME.
In 1865, June 19 marked the date which Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were free.
The expansion of the institution of slavery is intimately connected with Maine’s statehood, with the Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitting Maine as a free state under the pretense that Missouri be admitted as a slave state.
Juneteenth today represents the triumph over slavery by African Americans everywhere, and has been commemorated as a major holiday in some parts of the US for more than a century.
Original source can be found here
