By Henri Migala

Photo, left: ECM editor Miriam Raftery with Allan Durden, organizer of La Mesa’s Juneteenth event.

June 21, 2022 (La Mesa) -- Several hundred people came out to commemorate and celebrate Juneteenth at MacArthur Park in La Mesa on Sunday, June 19, with food, music, history, entertainment, including the MLK Choir, step-show dance groups, bounce house with slide, crafts, and family fun.

This La Mesa Juneteenth and Friends celebration is a grassroots community effort to bring the rich heritage, culture, and fun of a Juneteenth Jubilee to La Mesa, East County and the wider San Diego region.

Juneteenth commemorates the official end of slavery in the U.S., when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedoms on June 19, 1865, over two years after U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The inaugural commemoration of it was in 1866, and it was officially recognized as a federal holiday in 2021.