Description

The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire’s celebration of Juneteenth this year will be filled with a host of activities guaranteed to excite the entire community.
 
The festivities begin on Friday, June 10 at dusk with a showing of Pixar’s “Soul” at Prescot Park. This film is shown in partnership with the Prescot Park Arts Festival as a special event in their Wentworth-Douglass Hospital Movie Series and is free and open to the public.
 
The celebration continues on Saturday, June 11, with a bus tour to Saint Gaudens National Historical Park in Cornish NH to see the African Americans and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment Memorial.  The tour will be presented by Doctoral Candidate Dana Gree, Public History and Art Fellow at the park.  Included in the tour is the house, studio, and gardens of the sculpture Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
 
On Friday June 17, there will be an artist panel discussion entitled “Bearing Witness: Black Art in Public Spaces.” This panel will discuss the Black Power and Black Arts movements of the 20th century to the Black Lives Matter movement of today and artists of color who have created public art that provided a communal vision of history, heritage, and hope. Panelists include Sam Collins III, Juneteenth Historian & Public Art Creator, Galveston, TX; Joel Christian-Gill, Graphic novelist and cartoonist, Derry, NH; Richard Haynes, Artist, Educator & Visual Storyteller, Portsmouth, NH; Cecilia Ulibarri, President & Co-Founders Positive Street Art, Nashua, NH; and Manuel “Phelany” Ramirez, Artist-In-Residence & Co-Founder Positive Street Art, Nashua, NH. 
 
On Saturday, June 18, at 4:00 pm BHTNH will partner with the Music Hall, Portsmouth, by presenting Let it Shine: The Howard Gospel Choir Sings the Gospel. This event promises to be a spirit-lifting gospel concert by students, alumni, and community members from Howard University. 
 
Sunday, June 19, at  2:00 PM BHTNH will present UPROAR: A celebration of African Celebration of African American Creativity live & streamed at the African Burying Ground Memoria. UPROAR is a high energy performance that introduces audiences to the unique lineages of African American dance demonstrating how enslaved people on American soil used stepping as a vehicle for communication.  
 
BHTNH will finish the celebration on Monday, June 20 beginning at 8:00 AM with The Art of Erasure: Gone But Never Forgotten. Award winning public artist Napoleon Jones-Henderson will lead a community workshop and street art project where participants will create a piece that the community will paint on a Portsmouth street and keep a record as the art fades. The eradication of the African Burying Ground in the 19th century serves as a literal example of the erasure of Black people from New Hampshire’s history.   
 
For more information for all of these events and to register, visit https://blackheritagetrailnh.org/juneteenth-celebration-2022/