About Our Celebration
JAACI, Juneteenth, An American Celebration Of Black History
2019 will mark 400 years of pain with minimal gain for Black Americans. If you know your ABC’s: (American Black Culture Denied) or not, it's not going to be all right going forward. We will not allow 2019 to mark 400 years of our contributions being denied any longer. We are awake; all we have to do is celebrate what we know. Let them lie and deny, love and truth will prevail.
Living and working here for 20 generations on this continent, even before there was a United States of America, we were the work force used to build and help create the USA. We will celebrate the legacy of our American Black Heroes and Path Breakers.
We will acknowledge our contributions going forward, we will acknowledge our American Black Culture and Heritage. No matter what shade, we must celebrate our Blackness, our American Black Culture and Heritage.
Working for love and truth we can overcome those working for power and profit, we can wake everyone with love and truth.
JAACI, Juneteenth An, American Celebration
Our Destiny, Our Responsibility, Own It!
"Responsibility is the price of greatness." (Winston Churchill)
In 1619, the first of our enslaved ancestors arrived in the American colonies in what is now known as Ft. Monroe, VA. The first Blacks in America were brought here, in chains against their will. They were sold and bought into slavery for over two hundred forty-four years to supply the blood and sweat needed in laying the foundation for the building of a great country, the United States of America.
Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Black Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline in 350 years of kidnapping, coercion and slavery.
But, not all of our ancestors arrived in the New World chained in the hole of a Frigate. Some traversed a frozen Bearing Strait, these natives had their lands stolen and were given reservations with borders drawn around them, while a privileged few made it through Ellis Island.
On the 4th of July in 1776, the American Colonies established the United States of America, declaring all men were created free and equal. After intense lobbying by Frederick Douglass, on September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln un-veiled his Emancipation Proclamation, in which he called for freedom for all slaves in the rebel states by January 1, 1863. But, the rebel states fought on to resist this decree until April 14, 1865. It then took the U.S. Army, under the command of General Gordon Granger, until June 19, 1865 to ensure that General Order #3, (the Declaration of Freedom), was read to the last known slaves in Galveston, Texas.
With the Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865, slavery was finally illegal everywhere in the USA.
After more than three hundred ninety years, the contributions and place of Black Americans is still questioned and denied today. To correct this oversight and ensure the prominence of our people and position in American and World History, we must elevate the significance of Juneteenth to a National day of celebration. It is our responsibility not to take for granted the 19th of June, but to own the day, wherever it falls in the week, every year.
As a nation, we celebrate the many special days diverse groups with great enthusiasm in the USA such as St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, and Bastille Day.
We can and should elevate Juneteenth to a yearly celebration comparable to no less than one of America’s most notable holidays, the 4th of July. But your input is necessary, and your involvement is crucial in defining Black American History.
Our forefathers fought and died for the greatest country in the world. The love and honor for their country has been equal to any other group to arrive in the America’s before and after the Mayflower. It has been a long time and now we all need to shed our bitterness and work toward reconciliation by promoting perseverance, historical awareness, and racial harmony, one American at a time, through commonality and interaction.
Get Involved
Junteenth, AACI is actively raising awareness of the African-American experience in America.
“We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country... We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be modified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be: What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go whit this people, either as a testimony against them, or as evidence in their favor throughout their generations.”
“We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country... We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be modified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be: What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go whit this people, either as a testimony against them, or as evidence in their favor throughout their generations.”
“We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country... We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be modified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be: What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go whit this people, either as a testimony against them, or as evidence in their favor throughout their generations.”
Frederick Douglass
“An injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country... We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be modified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be: What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go whit this people, either as a testimony against them, or as evidence in their favor throughout their generations.”
“We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country... We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be modified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be: What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go whit this people, either as a testimony against them, or as evidence in their favor throughout their generations.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
"I never had it made."
