“Denver’s resilient Juneteenth Music Festival staged its annual parade last year in the historic Five Points neighborhood, despite challenges that made it one of the city’s only parades of 2020.
“It was a real, actual parade down there,” said Norman Harris III, executive director of the music festival — the roots of which go back decades in Denver. “It was socially distanced, but we had people marching outside. … This year we plan to have one of the biggest Juneteenth celebrations the city has ever seen.”
That’s no idle pledge for the events, which will return to Five Points June 18-20. In February, Denver city council members declared Juneteenth a commemorative holiday, following years-long community efforts to designate it as such. Juneteenth, on June 19, marks the official end of slavery in 1865, a holiday that started in Texas and has expanded in various ways to the majority of states and Washington, D.C. Colorado began recognizing it as a ceremonial holiday in 2004.”
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Wenzel, John. The Know 10 May 2021.