Around the Bay Area, Juneteenth events are scheduled to take place and celebrate Black culture, with a focus on music, art and food.
Spanning Friday to Sunday, the holiday’s festivities will occur across the entire region, with headliner events taking place in Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco.
Juneteenth commemorates the day Union troops of the Civil War made their way to Galveston, Texas, declaring the Emancipation Proclamation to free the nation’s final enslaved people. Observed annually on June 19, Juneteenth became an official federal holiday in 2021, signed into law by President Joe Biden.
However, the Bay Area has celebrated the holiday since long before it was nationally recognized. The region’s oldest continuously running Juneteenth celebration is San Francisco’s Juneteenth Freedom Celebration, which had its 80th anniversary on Saturday, when it kicked off regional festivities.
Taking place in the Fillmore District, the event filled eight city blocks with thousands of people, featuring free carnival rides and music concerts.
This weekend, the celebrations will continue, with major parades and festivals set to be hosted in Oakland, Antioch, Vallejo, San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose and Palo Alto.
All festivals will place a primary focus on promoting Black culture and entrepreneurship, featuring local Black artists and food vendors.
Oakland, San Jose events in spotlight Friday
On Friday, Downtown Oakland’s Hella Juneteenth Festival and San Jose’s Juneteenth Community Celebration will center around music.
The Oakland event will be headlined by East Oakland native rapper and producer Ovrkast, who produced two tracks for Drake’s album “For All The Dogs Scary Hours Edition in 2023”. Pope Flynn, the Ghanaian-born master percussionist and vocalist for the Sweet Talks band, will lead a drumming workshop in San Jose.
Other events, such as Juneteenth! at the Museum at the Oakland Mueseum of California on Friday, will highlight Black artists.
Though the OMCA event will also include live music, the event’s main attraction is the museum’s special African-American exhibition “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,” which links personal memory to broader history, showcasing the work of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard.
Many of the Bay Area’s Juneteenth events are organized by community-led nonprofits and cultural organizations, though a few are city-sponsored, such as Antioch’s Juneteenth: A Freedom Celebration on Friday and East Palo Alto’s Welcome Black Weekend, which takes place Friday through Sunday.
Even in the absence of a city-sponsored community event, most Bay Area city councils are working to recognize the holiday with gestures of Black solidarity. At Hayward City Hall, the city will raise the Pan African flags, while in Pleasant Hill, the City Council’s Diversity Commission will offer public remarks amidst its Juneteenth Celebration.
