Juneteenth Celebration

This year, the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire celebrates Juneteenth alongside the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, an event widely framed as the birth of American freedom. This milestone invites us to reflect on the gaps, contradictions, and unfinished work embedded in the American experiment. Telling the full American story requires moving beyond a narrow focus on famous “founders” and battlefield triumphs. It asks that we center the lived experiences of those whose lands were taken and of those who fought for liberty while being denied it.

In New Hampshire and across the colonies, Black men served as soldiers, sailors, laborers, and spies during the Revolutionary War. Their lives reveal the central paradox of the Revolution: a war for liberty waged alongside the institution of slavery. The contradiction is undeniable: some fought while still enslaved, while others were promised freedom in exchange for service — promises that were not always kept.

Black Revolutionary War veterans embodied both the nation’s highest ideals and its deepest failures. To tell their stories does not diminish the founding; it deepens our understanding of it.

Through public programs, visits to historic sites, storytelling, and dialogue, the Trail uses the Semiquincentennial to examine how the ideals of freedom were contested, claimed, and lived out on the ground. Expanding our understanding of the Revolution affirms that Black history is not a separate story; it is foundational to the American story.

Celebrate Juneteenth side-by-side with others of goodwill by walking from Kittery, Maine, to the African Burying Ground in Portsmouth, New Hampshire! Meet at John Paul Jones Memorial Park on the Kittery side of the Route 1 Memorial Bridge. Wakers will gather by 9:00 AM and begin the 0.8-mile walk at 9:30 AM to the Burying Ground at 386 State Street, Portsmouth, NH, led by The Leftist Marching Band.

Parking for those participating in the walk is available at Kittery Walk-in Care, 35 Walker Street, and wheelchair-accessible parking spots across Hunter Ave by the Warren’s Lobster sign.

Bring a Sign. Bring a tambourine! Help celebrate African American Freedom.

This walk is hosted by The Seacoast African American Cultural Center, the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, BLM NH, Green Acre Baha’i Center of Learning, and Seacoast NAACP.

Join us for a sacred Juneteenth gathering honoring the lives and legacies of those excluded from America’s founding promises—Native Americans, Africans and African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, and other marginalized communities.

This cross-cultural commemorative event includes a Native American blessing, the reading of Portsmouth’s enslaved Africans’ names, and African drumming and dance. Together, we will remember, reflect, and celebrate resilience, culture, and community.

The gathering invites us to honor the past while envisioning the America we can become—one that truly lives up to its ideals of liberty, justice, and inclusion for all.

All are welcome.

This Juneteenth, step into history and celebrate five extraordinary African Americans whose courage, brilliance, and resolve shaped the nation. Firsts in Freedom honors Black pioneers who broke barriers, claimed their humanity, and helped define what freedom means in America.

Through dynamic living history interpreters, these historic figures will come to life—sharing their stories in their own voices and inviting you into the moments that changed history.

Meet:

• Wentworth Cheswell — Revolutionary War veteran, community leader, and the first Black person elected to public office in the United States.
• Richard Potter —An internationally known magician, ventriloquist, and performer who became America’s first celebrity.
• Harriet Wilson — The first Black woman to publish a novel in the United States.
• Prince Whipple — Revolutionary War veteran and one of the signers of the 1779 Petition for Freedom.
• Ona Marie Judge — A young woman enslaved by George and Martha Washington who made the courageous decision to free herself.

This family-friendly celebration will also feature hands-on activities for children, interactive learning stations, and opportunities to engage directly with interpreters. Young visitors can explore history through crafts, storytelling, and creative play designed to spark curiosity and pride.

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and heroic orator for liberty, delivered one of his most famous speeches in which he asked, “What to the slave is your Fourth of July?” In addressing an Independence Day observance in Rochester, New York, his speech was a blistering indictment of an American idealism that ignored and accepted the inhuman treatment of enslaved African Americans as part of the country’s identity and economy. Ironically, even though Douglass’ words spoke directly to this moment in history, they still ring with an unsettling power today.

For the past several years,the BHTNH has collaborated with community leaders around the Granite State to bring people together to read Douglass’ historic protest speech and to reflect on its meaning. This event happens on the Saturday before the 4th of July at 12:00 pm (noon.)

While reading Frederick Douglass’ work is a powerful experience for many, it is only one piece of the long-overdue conversations that our communities need to have. We hope that these readings will be a starting point for these difficult dialogues and that they will provide an opportunity for us to engage in deeper conversations that will lead to actions to help build more inclusive and just communities today.

Learn more details about Frederick Douglass Community Readings here.

The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, in partnership with the Independence Museum and Exeter Public Library, invites the public to join us for a moving, immersive journey through New Hampshire’s Black Revolutionary War history.

Our day begins on Pierce Island in Portsmouth with an opening ceremony and musket salute, grounding us in the revolutionary moment when ideas of liberty, freedom, and independence were articulated, though not yet extended to all. From there, participants will board a bus for a guided historical tour tracing the lives and legacies of Black New Hampshire patriots from Portsmouth, Newmarket, and Exeter.

The tour begins in Portsmouth with Prince Whipple, an enslaved man who became a Revolutionary War soldier and a signer of the 1779 Petition of Freedom, one of the earliest collective demands by enslaved Africans in New England for emancipation.

We then travel to Newmarket, the hometown of Wentworth Cheswell, a patriot, historian, and town leader who is reported to have carried out his own Sons of Liberty ride, much like Paul Revere’s.

Our journey continues to Exeter, New Hampshire’s then capital, where revolutionary ideas were debated, drafted, and put into motion. There, we will hear about Jude Hall, who earned his freedom by fighting at Bunker Hill, and many other veterans. In Exeter, we will also visit the American Independence Museum for lunch and to view a special exhibit that situates New Hampshire within the broader struggle for independence, while inviting us to reflect on whose freedom was secured, and whose was deferred.

We will return to Portsmouth having traveled not just across geography, but across memory and meaning. This tour, part of our Juneteenth celebration, asks us to reckon honestly with American freedom—its promises, its contradictions, and its unfinished work. At a time when Black history is being erased, challenged, or silenced, this program calls us to look at our shared American history with clear, dispassionate eyes. By centering the stories of Black patriots, we gain a fuller, truer understanding of the Revolution and are reminded that the fight for liberty has always been multiracial, complex, and ongoing.

Past Juneteenth Events

View Recordings Here

Juneteenth 2025 (WIP page)

Juneteenth 2024