Juneteenth: Celebrating Freedom, Culture, and Community

Celebrate Juneteenth as a national holiday through historical interpretation, music, and hands-on activities honoring the story of emancipation and African American heritage.

Visitors can watch and take part in a variety of ongoing activities throughout the day, including historic cooking demonstrations featuring traditional Juneteenth recipes, quilting with a “Make Your Own Quilt Square” activity, and listen to traditional banjo music performed by local musician, Stephen Hardy. A military demonstration of the 25^th Ohio Volunteers will highlight the role of the Federal soldiers who occupied York County at the end of the Civil War and enforced emancipation. A specialized site tour, “The Hope of Emancipation” will be at 11 a.m. and at 2 p.m. there will be a tour of the Enslaved Ancestral Burial Ground.

Juneteenth is part of Historic Brattonsville’s Living History Saturday series. This year-around programming is where history comes to life through demonstrations, hands-on activities, and farm life.

Historic Brattonsville features more than 30 colonial and antebellum structures across 800 acres, including historic homes, farm buildings, walking trails, and a Revolutionary War battlefield. The site is recognized as part of the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program and the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network.