While Juneteenth is officially celebrated on June 19, the Tennessee State Museum will celebrate the day with a day-long event on Saturday, June 11 that will enable us to include members of the Fort Negley Descendants Project, who will present one of the city’s biggest Juneteenth celebrations the following weekend at the park. This day-long event at the Museum, presented in partnership with the World AfriCultural Community Project, will feature music, dance, poetry and art, together with crafts and historic games. The day’s programming will include a screening and discussion by the Fort Negley Descendants Project, and the chance for visitors to interact with United States Colored Troops (USCT) reenactors Bill Radcliffe and Gary Burke and great-great grandson of Frederick Douglass, Kevin Greene.
The day’s events will also include an installment of the Museum’s TN Writers | TN Stories series with author Leigh Ann Gardener, reading from her Vanderbilt University Press book To Care for the Sick and Bury the Dead: African American Lodges and Cemeteries in Tennessee, before sitting down in conversation with journalist, author and historian, and board member of the Nashville Chapter of the Afro-American Genealogical Society, Natalie Bell. All activities are free and open to the public.
