The Juneteenth Festival of Buffalo was started in 1976 by B.U.I.L.D., a community-based organization, as a culturally relevant alternative to the country’s Bicentennial Celebration. The group blocked off part of Jefferson Avenue — the “Main Street” of Buffalo’s Black community — for a weekend celebration. Murals were painted and vendors set up booths to sell ethnic foods and wares — entertainment and
festivity were abundant. After several years, the Juneteenth Festival outgrew Jefferson Avenue. It is now held in Martin Luther King Jr. Park at the intersection of Best Street and Fillmore Avenue.
Juneteenth of Buffalo, Inc. exists exclusively for charitable and educational purposes. Staffed by volunteers, its mission is to actively preserve and promote the broad spectrum of African American
heritage through educational and cultural activities that will benefit the community as a whole.
Juneteenth Festival, Inc. partners with existing organizations with similar community-based objectives
to help achieve its mission.
Juneteenth was the oldest known observance of the ending of slavery in the United States. According to
historical records, the celebration began on June 19, 1865, the day Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army rode into Galveston, Texas in final execution of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Issued by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation stated, among other things, “That on the 1st day of January, A.D., 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall they be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…
