Juneteenth is a Federal holiday celebrating the completion of the 1863 proclamation freeing all enslaved peoples in the United States. 

We are a local collaborative of volunteers that originally formed to create an annual celebration in Provincetown that honors the history of Juneteenth. We also support the diverse community of Provincetown through education and activism throughout the year.

Our long-term goals include initiatives that will document the history of Provincetown as part of both the underground railroad and the abolition movement as well as a place that Black and African American artists and performers have been present.

As of January 2025, we are entering our fifth year as a collaborative and are in the process of developing our formal organizational structure. During this period, we currently govern ourselves as a group using mostly a consensus-based process, with a designated administrative facilitator for the organization and production facilitator for the Juneteenth Ptown celebration event/s.

You can read a little bit about our past Juneteenth celebration events in these news clippings from 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021. Among other acheivements, we hosted “Blackcellence” in 2023, the first ever show featuring all Black and Brown Provincetown performers. In 2024, we collaborated with James Jackson, Jr., who developed a cabaret performance centered around the history of Black and Brown performers in Provincetown. More photos and information are located here.

Current working group members:

David Wilson (Provincetown Theatre); Rev. Kate Wilkinson, (Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown); Donna Walker (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Director, Town of Provincetown); Elspeth Slayter (Center for Equity-Minded Practice& Salem State University); Ngina Lythcott, (Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program,  Provincetown School Committee, & Provincetown Scholarship Committee); Myra Kooy (Radiance Art); James Jackson, Jr. (Broadway Performer); Jaime DeSousa (Outer Cape Community Solutions, Soren West, Outer Cape Health Services); Aaron Clayton (Arrow Nine & Freelance Executive Producer); Izzy Berdan (Independent Creative Strategist & Editor of Fag Rag) and Byllye Avery, Black Women’s Health Imperative)