Join Downtown Metuchen, NAACP Metuchen Edison Piscataway, Papillon & Company & Metuchen Human Relations Commission as we celebrate our inaugural Juneteenth Celebration! Learn about this important holiday, enjoy specials throughout our businesses, join in with step dancing with SWA (Steppaz With Attitude out of Rahway, NJ Coach Ms. Simone Smith), children’s story time and a special discussion focusing on “Lens on Black Life” with Dr. Joel Branch with featured artists with Kamoinge Workshop at Papillon & Company.
Scheduled Activities
11am to 4pm – Children’s Activities with Metuchen Human Relations Commission
11am, 11:45am, 12:15pm and 12:45pm – Children’s story time at Papillon & Company (each story time will last approximately 15 minutes)
1pm to 2pm at Papillon & Company – Lens on Black Life Photography Exhibit by Kamoinge Workshop. Discussion led by Dr. Joel Branch and Exhibition Photographers
2pm to 4pm at Town Plaza & throughout Downtown Metuchen – Step Dancing with SWA (Steppaz With Attitude out of Rahway, NJ Coach Ms. Simone Smith).
What is Juneteenth?
On June 19, 1865, about two months after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Va., Gordon Granger, a Union general, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African-Americans of their freedom and that the Civil War had ended. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued more than two and a half years earlier on Jan. 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln. The holiday received its name by combining June and 19. The day is also sometimes called “Juneteenth Independence Day,” “Freedom Day” or “Emancipation Day.”
