June 7 (UPI) — The White House has announced President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will host a Juneteenth concert next week to “celebrate community, culture and music” in honor of the country’s newest federal holiday.
The concert, which will be held Tuesday on the South Lawn of the White House, will feature performances by fifteen artists, including singers Jennifer Hudson, Katrina Miller and Cliff “Method Man” Smith; broadway star Audra McDonald; actors Colman Domingo and Nicco Annan; as well as the Hampton University Concert Choir and a number of marching bands, including the president’s own U.S. Marine Band.
The concert will take place six days before the Juneteenth holiday, which falls on June 19. The holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the United States in 1885 after the Civil War.
The concert celebrating music also takes place during Black Music Month.
Juneteenth became a state holiday in Texas in 1980 and a proposal to make it a federal holiday was first introduced in the Senate in 1996. It is also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and Liberation Day.
In 2021, Biden signed bipartisan legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday to help Americans “learn from our history, celebrate our progress, and recognize and engage in the work that continues,” the White House said in a statement Wednesday.
“Great nations don’t ignore painful moments,” Biden said as he signed the holiday into law two years ago. “They don’t ignore those moments in the past. They embrace them.”
