On the first Saturday of Juneteenth weekend, we will be celebrating America’s second independence day at our art and garden space in Redlands California.

Art prints, books, and plants will be available for purchase and everyone is welcome to view our selections at no cost. Please help us raise funds for our work with those suffering from brain injury and disease.

The event starts at 9am until around noon (or it gets a little too hot for comfort).

But not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth,” by the newly freed people in Texas. 

Smithsonian Institute