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Alexandria will mark Juneteenth with ceremonies, concerts, museum programs and a community festival connecting the celebration of freedom to the city’s prominent role in the domestic slave trade.
The observance comes as June 19 commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free—more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Events will begin at Douglass Memorial Cemetery before moving to Shiloh Baptist Church and concluding with an evening festival at the Charles Houston Recreation Center. The Freedom House Museum and Alexandria Black History Museum will also open for the holiday.
Historian and Juneteenth committee member Char McCargo Bah said the program was designed to keep the city’s history and the meaning of emancipation at the center of the celebration.
From slave-trading port to refuge
Founded as a Potomac River port in 1749, Alexandria became one of early America’s busiest commercial centers. Its trade included the buying and selling of enslaved people of all ages.
After the international slave trade was banned in 1808, Alexandria emerged during the 1820s and 1830s as a major hub in the domestic trade. Enslaved men, women and children were forcibly moved from the Chesapeake region to plantations in the Deep South.
Many were confined in local jails or private slave pens before being sold. Some were marched overland in chained groups known as coffles, while others were shipped from Alexandria’s waterfront to cities including New Orleans.
That role began to change after Union forces occupied Alexandria in 1861. Thousands of people escaping slavery sought refuge in the city, where they formed communities, pursued new opportunities and supported the Union war effort.
Some former slave-trading properties were put to new uses. The building at 1315 Duke Street, where enslaved people had once been imprisoned, later became a Union military prison and a hospital for Black soldiers.
The property now houses the Freedom House Museum. Once the headquarters of Franklin & Armfield, one of the country’s largest slave-trading firms, the museum documents the cruelty of the trade and the resilience of those who endured and resisted it.
Honoring Black Alexandria
The Juneteenth program will open at Douglass Memorial Cemetery, a segregated African American burial ground established in 1895.
Michael Johnson, who is leading restoration efforts there, said recognizing African Americans’ contributions to Alexandria should inspire pride across racial, religious and cultural lines. He described the work as a way to acknowledge and address wrongs committed before the present generation was born.
Historian and Howard University professor Elizabeth Lewis, who contributed research to the “Roots” television miniseries, will serve as mistress of ceremonies for the cemetery program.
Later, the Washington Revels Jubilee Voices will perform at Shiloh Baptist Church, presenting African American spirituals, stories and cultural traditions rooted in expressions of hope and resistance during slavery.
Bah urged residents to remember Shiloh and three other Black congregations founded during the Civil War: Beulah Baptist Church, Third Baptist Church and Zion Baptist Church. All four served generations of Black Alexandrians and continue holding Sunday services.
The celebration will culminate at the Charles Houston Recreation Center with live music grounded in Black cultural traditions, youth activities, performances and educational exhibits about local history. The festival will open with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” widely known as the Black national anthem.
Committee member Gwen Day Fuller said Alexandria’s many Juneteenth activities help preserve the history of people who waited two additional years to receive word of their freedom.
Juneteenth schedule
10–11:15 a.m. — Memorial at Douglass Cemetery 1421 Wilkes Street Free
1–3 p.m. — Washington Revels Jubilee Voices Concert Shiloh Baptist Church 1401 Jamieson Ave. Free
4–8 p.m. — Juneteenth Festival Charles Houston Recreation Center 901 Wythe Street
11 a.m.–4 p.m. — Freedom House Museum 1315 Duke Street Admission charged; free for Alexandria residents
11 a.m.–8 p.m. — Alexandria Black History Museum 902 Wythe Street Admission charged; free for Alexandria residents
Metered parking fees will not be collected because Juneteenth is a holiday.