Juneteenth Gathering: #Pop-up Poetry and "Jubilee Juneteenth & the Thirteenth"

Gather with your neighbors on Juneteenth for a special poetry performance and film screening connecting past and present, in partnership with the Museum of African American History in Boston. Bring a lawn chair or blanket for this outdoor screening. Picnic meals are welcome.

The evening begins at 7:30 PM with a Drum Call, community processional, and poetry reading, part of the #Pop-Up Poetry Series, A Denise Plays Hard Event with Becoming Chibuzo, Multi-Disciplinary Artist/Producer Akili Jamal Haynes.

At 8:30, we will screen the film Jubilee Juneteenth and the Thirteenth outdoors on the Longfellow House lawn, a documentary produced by The Museum of African American History Boston and Nantucket, with funding from Liberty Mutual, MGH, and Harvard University Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Hosted by Hill Harper. Watch the trailer on YouTube.

Jubilee Juneteenth and the Thirteenth accurately portrays the influential but often overlooked role that African Americans in Boston and Massachusetts played in the events that led to the abolition of slavery in the United States. It explores the importance of the African Meetinghouse, built by and for Black people in 1806 as Boston’s first black church. It stands today as the oldest original black church building in America. For nearly six decades preceding the Civil War, the African Meetinghouse was the epicenter where much activism to abolish slavery was born and bred.