Juneteenth commemorates our nation’s true independence—the day when all members of the newly reunited nation were finally declared free after the American Civil War. More than 400 years after the first enslaved African people were brought to the North American colonies, the fight for equality continues.

“We are blessed to be welcomed into the spirit of freedom and the age of democratic idealism during our national celebration of Juneteenth Liberation. Out of the bleak shadows of inhumanity etched in our history by slavery’s cruelty and brutality we hear God’s call to righteousness and justice and the recall to humanity for which we were created and without which we will frustrate the sons of all ages.

Don’t miss the precious call to get on the freedom train on the way to the promised land our souls so desperately yearn for in these dark days of anguish and hopelessness. Each Juneteenth when we hear the freedom bells ringing let us lift every voice and sing until earth and heaven ring with new possibilities of the beloved community.”

—Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, jr.

The Healing of the Nations Juneteenth Celebration was a vision of Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. and Mrs. Bettye Forbes, founded in 2015 while Dr. Forbes was senior pastor at Riverside Church in New York. The vision was to use the power of spiritual liturgy and the performing arts as tools of human transformation to heal the festering wounds endemic in contemporary America, including systemic racism, religious tension, and economic injustice.

The Juneteenth program is presented by The Healing Nations Foundation in collaboration with Carnegie Hall. Our partnership began in 2019 when Carnegie welcomed Rev. Forbes and Healing of the Nations, opening the Hall to present this program as a gift to the New York community. We are deeply grateful for Carnegie’s leadership and their dedicated staff who work diligently with us each year.

We celebrate this long journey for such a proclamation of freedom, and this program of commemoration and remembrance recalls the jubilance of fore parents who imagined and experienced the legal yoke of enslavement being removed. We share in reflection on the past, issue a call for the present, and bring forth joy and light for the future.