Area residents will have the opportunity to celebrate a national holiday marking the end of slavery, Juneteenth, at Olde City Park again this year.

The free event is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 18 and will feature live music, a DJ, food trucks, arts and craft vendors, a pageant, a children’s area and a history and education section.

Wylie resident Rachael Brown is a member of the Juneteenth Organization of Wylie, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating the city’s diversity, and one of the organizers for the event.

Brown said last year’s celebration drew over 1,000 attendees, and the event has been reorganized to be “bigger and better.”

Juneteenth has been a Texas holiday since the 1970s, but it wasn’t a federal holiday until last year. After the emancipation proclamation was signed in 1863, freeing enslaved people in Texas and all other

Southern states of the Confederacy, the news spread quickly in many parts of the U.S. Because Texas was the most remote state of the former Confederacy, enforcement of the proclamation was slow.

“It wasn’t until two and half years later, in June of 1865 when the word actually made it here by way of Galveston,” Brown said. “Even then, it still took some time to move through Texas.”

Many former slaves began to celebrate among themselves every year on June 19, calling the holiday Jubilee Day or Emancipation Day.

“Like most southern celebrations, it was outside with food, family and music,” Brown said. “Just celebrating the fact that they had control of their lives.”

For the full story, see the June 9 issue of The Sachse News.