“Juneteenth: A Fierce Urgency Celebration!”
June 19, 2021 @ 7:30 pm - June 21, 2021 @ 7:30 pm
| Free“Juneteenth: A Fierce Urgency Celebration!”
Hosted by Michael Mwenso
Featuring performances, reflections, and contributions from Black artists and Penn State faculty
Produced by Electric Root in partnership with the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State
Watch the event beginning at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 19. It will be available for streaming until 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 21.
Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth (short for June Nineteenth) commemorates the day in 1865 when United States troops arrived in Galveston to seize control of the former Confederate state of Texas. Federal authority ensured that everyone who had been enslaved would be freed.
The arrival came two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and two months following the Confederate surrender in Virginia, which marked the end of the American Civil War.
“Juneteenth: A Fierce Urgency Celebration!” a film featuring artists and academics, honors the meaning and ongoing struggle behind the longest-running African-American holiday. Hosted by musician Michael Mwenso, the film includes Mwenso and The Shakes, Urban Bush Women, Shariffa Chelimo Ali, Dashon Burton, J. Marlena Edwards, Charles Dumas, and Aquila Kikora Franklin.
