The White House announced on Wednesday that President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will be hosting a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn on June 13. The event comes two years after Biden signed a bipartisan legislation establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19 annually, commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. “Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation, and a promise of a brighter morning to come. This is a day of profound — in my view — profound weight and profound power,” Biden said at the time of signing the bill. “A day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take — what I’ve long called ‘America’s original sin.’” The Associated Press has the story:
Bidens to host Juneteenth concert at WH
Newslooks- WASHINGTON (AP)
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will host a Juneteenth concert next week in a “celebration of community, culture and music,” the White House announced Wednesday.
The concert, to be held June 13, will be on the South Lawn of the White House. During the event, the White House says it will “uplift American art forms that sing to the soul of the American experience” as part of Black Music Month.
President Joe Biden signs the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law in the East Room of the White House on June 17, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
Artists that will be featured include Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, singer and talk show host Jennifer Hudson, and Cliff “Method Man” Smith, a member of the legendary hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan.
Juneteenth marks when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free — which occurred June 19, 1985, when Union soldiers told enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, news of their freedom. It became a federal holiday in 2021.
“This is a day of profound weight and profound power, a day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take,” Biden said two years ago as he signed legislation, backed by overwhelming bipartisan margins in Congress, that established Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
