Celebrating Juneteenth around Oregon

It’s 2026, and Juneteenth is still a relatively new phenomenon to many Oregonians.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned they were free — two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. In Oregon, most cities and towns didn’t hold their first “Freedom Day” celebration until 2021, following then-President Joe Biden’s recognition of the day as a federal holiday.

Fast forward to the second Trump Administration and Juneteenth celebrations are one of many victims of the president’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion. A president can’t unilaterally cancel the recognition of federal holidays without a vote from Congress. But federal leaders have taken steps like eliminating free entry fees at national parks on Juneteenth, while maintaining the perk on Flag Day, which falls on June 14 and also happens to be Trump’s birthday. Furthermore, Trump’s executive order declaring all DEI programs “illegal and immoral” has resulted in less funding and broad support for Juneteenth celebrations.

The history of the holiday is fraught with struggles for recognition. In 1866, freedmen in Texas held the first Juneteenth celebration, then known as “Jubilee Day.” Throughout the late 1800s, the celebrations were often used as rallies to provide voting instructions. Organizers often had to pool funds to buy land for the events because segregation barred them from using public parks.

Juneteenth celebrations declined during the Jim Crow era, in part because of Black migration, both from farms to cities, as well as out of the South.

The 1960s saw a mass revival in the celebrations, with Black people tying Juneteenth events to the civil rights struggle. Activists, including Opal Lee, who is known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” spent decades campaigning for the day’s recognition as a federal holiday. Lee led 2.5 mile walks to symbolize the 2.5 years before enslaved people in Galveston learned they were free and expanded the gesture into a walk from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington D.C. in 2016, when she was 89 years old. She was recognized and participated in the signing of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in 2021.

Even though all 50 states now observe Juneteenth, only 31 recognize it as a paid state holiday. Oregon is one of those states, but organizers of citywide Juneteenth celebrations throughout the state have been forced to navigate budget cuts and inconsistent support from community partners. In some cases, they have faced hostility from both non-Black community members and even local governments.   

Street Roots spoke with organizers of community Juneteenth celebrations in Portland, Oregon City, Central Oregon and Southern Oregon to see how they’re adjusting to the current political climate.

Portland

There are myriad Juneteenth events happening in Portland. The longest running is the Juneteenth Oregon Festival and Clara Peoples Freedom Trail Parade. Now in its 54th year as a recognized, citywide celebration in Portland, it was founded by Clara Mae Peoples, who first introduced the tradition to her coworkers on the Kaiser shipyards in 1945. 

Heather Coleman-Cox is in her tenth year helping organize the event. As a child, she grew up three blocks away from Peoples, who used to provide groceries to community members in need. A longtime admirer of Peoples’ prolific community activism, Coleman-Cox joined with Peoples’ daughter and granddaughters in 2016, following Peoples’ passing the year prior.

“She was a dynamo and community pillar in this city,” Coleman-Cox said. “Opal Lee is the nationally recognized grandmother of Juneteenth, but Clara Mae Peoples is the nationally recognized mother of Juneteenth and we are carrying on her legacy.” 

Despite the citywide event being held annually since 1972, Coleman-Cox notes that support and particularly sponsorships didn’t pick up at a large scale until 2021. Under the second Trump Administration, she says the event has lost sponsors who rely on federal funding.

While she’s not worried about the event’s survival, she doesn’t want to lose sight of honoring Peoples’ vision. Specifically, Peoples saw Juneteenth as an event that should be held at Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

“Cinco de Mayo is on the waterfront, Pride is on the waterfront and Juneteenth should also be on the waterfront.” Coleman-Cox said. ”We just need to have the support from the community, from businesses, from the state, from the city, from the county, to make that happen.”

In addition to efforts to centralize and expand the Juneteenth Oregon Festival, Coleman-Cox also rejects notions that there are too many Juneteenth celebrations relative to Oregon’s small Black population.

“There is not (just) one big 4th of July celebration that takes place anywhere, right?” she said. “They happen in barbecues and picnics all across this country. So Juneteenth deserves and warrants that same type of recognition, regardless of the size of a Black population in a city. It’s not just a Black celebration. It is an American celebration.” 

Oregon City 

For Tory Blackwell, the state of Juneteenth celebrations in Oregon City is a tenuous one. As a lead organizer with Unite Oregon City and a member of the Oregon City Juneteenth planning team since its inception in 2020, he has seen the event consistently grow. Over the years, organizers have relied on strategic partnerships with Oregon City Parks and Recreation, Oregon City Public Library and the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center to find existing funding that can support the event. 

“The idea of them wanting to partner because of a moral obligation to provide accurate history about the area has been helpful, so they’ve been able to pony up some resources,” Blackwell said. “But again, it’s not a city budget line item.”

As a father and faculty member at Clackamas Community College, Blackwell emphasizes the importance of being able to provide food, music and quality speakers to create an attractive, family-friendly event, especially in a place like Oregon City, that is not known for Black events. However, he worries that the strategic partnerships to secure space and funding can get weaponized to undermine the event by disingenuous actors.

“One could make the argument that there shouldn’t really be any kind of discussion around celebrating both Independence Days (Juneteenth and the Fourth of July) because we always, as a city, have the ability to find the staffing for July 4th,” Blackwell said.

Juneteenth events in Oregon City may become even more tenuous because of the impending departure of two major advocates: Library Director Greg Williams and Mayor Denyse McGriff, one of three Black mayors currently serving in the state, who is in the last year of her term.

McGriff has been part of the Juneteenth organizing team since the beginning, when she was a city councilor. She said community champions are crucial to the sustainability of cultural heritage events in the city. For example, she cited the absence of Diwali, Chinese New Year and Cinco De Mayo celebrations in Oregon City in 2026 because the groups who had been organizing them didn’t apply for grants this year. With the future of Juneteenth celebrations in an uncertain state, McGriff sees the potential loss of the events as a blow to already difficult outreach efforts.

“There are a lot more African Americans in this community than you realize and they’re sort of hiding in plain sight,” she said.

Central Oregon

Central Oregon Earthseeds, the organizers behind Central Oregon Juneteenth, will not be partnering with the City of Bend for their 2026 celebration.

For Joslyn Stanfield, that’s a plus.

“We don’t need them this year,” she said. “We’ve done all of the crowdsourcing through the community, myself and the other organizers. It’s been a lot less stressful.”

In addition to being able to provide free participation with no insurance requirements for BIPOC vendors, the fully grassroots planning allows Stanfield and Earthseeds to avoid controversies like last year, when funding was delayed in response to one of her Facebook posts. Despite Central Oregon Juneteenth being the only event honoring the holiday in Bend, the City mulled pulling the funding because Stanfield posted: “If you as a white person have EVER fixed your mouth to disrespect the Black women who got the ball rolling in Central Oregon, you are not invited to a celebration meant to uplift us.” 

The episode resulted in tension with city leaders in Bend, which is notable because the city had been an epicenter for community Juneteenth celebrations, with first ones between 2020-2024 being held in Bend’s Drake Park. It also resulted in personal threats for Stanfield, something she’s had to get accustomed to since organizing her first protest in her home of Prineville in 2020.

“One of the things with the Bend city government is that they’re really disconnected, of course, from our activism community and what we experience with the racist people,” she said. “A lot of the online hate and the pushback, they don’t see that. They don’t deal with that. I’ve had people show up to my house and threaten me and my kids. They don’t see all of this. They don’t experience this.”

Stanfield and a group of Black women organizers put together the first Central Oregon Juneteenth in 2020. The next few years after that, another grassroots organization, The Father’s Group, led organizing efforts. Marcus LeGrand, a co-founder of The Father’s Group, faculty member at Central Oregon Community College and Bend-LaPine school board member, believes events like Juneteenth are vital in this current political climate, especially for underserved communities.

“People are scared because of the stuff that’s been going down,” LeGrand said. “And unfortunately, many of us as Americans, Black, white or whatever you want to say, have not been taught or equipped to know how to handle this type of stuff. And now people are just lashing out.”

The recent overturning of Ian Cranston’s manslaughter conviction for the 2021 shooting of Barry Washington Jr. outside a Bend nightclub exemplifies the current climate. Cranston, who is white, says he shot and killed Washington Jr., a 21-year-old Black man who was unarmed at the time, after Washington allegedly flirted with Cranston’s fiancée and the two got into an altercation. 

In 2022, Cranston was convicted of first-degree manslaughter, assault and unlawful use of a weapon, but acquitted of murder. He served four years of a 10-year sentence before winning his appeal on the basis of a single sentence missing from the jury instructions. The second trial is scheduled for October and Cranston is currently on release.  

In fall 2025, the City of Bend installed a permanent memorial to Washington Jr. in the form of a bronze plaque located in downtown Bend. The memorial that previously sat in its place was a repeated target for vandalism. Earthseeds raised $3,800 to help support the installation of the plaque, which is two-and-a-half feet tall and includes a picture of Washington Jr., a quote from him and a Bible verse.

In this atmosphere, Stanfield sees even more importance in building community throughout Central Oregon. Earthseeds will be holding its 2026 Juneteenth celebration in Redmond. Even though the event has been a staple in Bend’s Drake Park for its first few years and in Open Space Event Studios in 2025, Stanfield wants to make sure all of Central Oregon, especially Black people in the region, feel welcome.

“I’ve always had this mindset of Central Oregon being this big area, but being very aware that I don’t want it to be Bend-centric,” Stanfield said. “Because there are people out in Prineville, in Redmond, in Madras, in Warm Springs.” 

Southern Oregon

Like Stanfield, Vance Beach takes a regional approach to organizing in southern Oregon as the founder of BASE, or Black Alliance and Social Empowerment. The organization serves Black families in the region with a variety of programs, including a youth group, liaisons with city government agencies, advocates in schools, public demonstrations and citywide events like Juneteenth.

“Juneteenth is a really special celebration and holiday for us, specifically as an organization, because it’s literally the first cultural celebration that we had as an organization,” Beach said.

In another similarity to Earthseeds, BASE has been no stranger to organizing in the face of tragedy. In particular, the organization has lent its support to raise awareness of the Justice for Hakiym campaign and to honor the memory of Aidan Ellison. 

The Justice for Hakiym campaign is an effort to exonerate Brian “Hakiym” Simpson, a Black, Indigenous and partially blind California firefighter who was convicted of second-degree assault following an altercation in 2024 with a fellow white firefighter, Brandon Keith Olson. Witnesses claim Olson was intoxicated, used racial slurs and threw the first punch. BASE has helped to amplify the campaign and worked with the Oregon Remembrance Project, including Southern Oregon chapters of the organization, to put together events around the efforts.

BASE has also united with other regional organizers to highlight the memory of Aidan Ellison, a 19-year-old Black former student of Ashland High School who was killed in 2020 by Robert Paul Keegan, a white man, during an altercation over “loud music.” 

The organization has participated in and helped organize demonstrations and vigils, as well as collaborated with community members on a “Say Their Names” memorial to lift up the memories of Black victims of police and extrajudicial violence, including Ellison. In response to repeated vandalism of the memorial, they also worked with community members to push for a permanent art installation. This has resulted in “Ancestor’s Future: Crystalizing Our Call,” an installation artist Micah BlackLight is sculpting. The monument is set for unveiling in March 2027.

The high profile tragedies and community responses have contributed to a close-knit Black community in the region, despite the low population numbers. Whether it’s responding to tragedy or organizing celebrations like Juneteenth, Beach just wants to let Black community members know there’s a local organization available to support them.

“We’re here to help serve, we’re here to help support, we’re here to make sure that folks know they have a home, and this is a place where you have representation,” Beach said.      

As of 2026, not only does BASE organize the largest annual Juneteenth celebration in the region in Medford, but it also assists in planning events in Ashland and Grants Pass.

The Medford celebration features live music, food trucks and performances. There are dozens of vendors, and about half are Black-owned. Beach said that the event draws attendees from Portland and California despite the region’s history of having sundown towns.

Like organizers in other cities, BASE has had to weather budget cuts and lost sponsorships in spite of its success. Nonetheless, both their efforts and those of other partners throughout Southern Oregon have continued to increase the region’s profile. 

For example, Grants Pass will host Opal Lee’s Walk for Freedom at this year’s Juneteenth celebration. Grants Pass was one of seven cities in the U.S. that was selected for the activation, which will feature an appearance by Opal Lee’s granddaughter, Dione Sims, founder of Unity Unlimited.  

Beach credits a large volunteer base and creativity in the face of institutional challenges for BASE’s ability to expand its service to local Black communities.

“That’s who we are as a people,” he said. “We’re resilient and we constantly find ways just to keep going.”

This article appears in June 17, 2026.