Honoring and Celebrating Juneteenth and Pride Month
For many New Yorkers, June — Pride Month and home to Juneteenth — can be a time for reflection and reconnection. The month is a time to both celebrate and meditate on queer and Black culture through a variety of events.
Juneteenth, observed on June 19, marks the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas — nearly two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery.
In 2020, as protests swept the nation after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, Juneteenth became a holiday in New York State; it became a federal holiday last June.
But for years, people have been finding ways to commemorate and honor the importance of the day. “It’s more than celebrating the holiday,” the author, chef and artist Lazarus Lynch told Gina Cherelus, a Styles reporter for The Times, in 2020. “It’s celebrating life and the existence of life.” June is also Pride Month, commemorating the Stonewall uprising, which began around 1 a.m.
