Denver Juneteenth returns to Five Points this weekend

For many families, Juneteenth means cookouts, music, festivals and a hard-earned celebration of freedom. But the holiday also carries a deeper responsibility: remembering what freedom required, who fought for it and why the work did not end on June 19, 1865.

Juneteenth commemorates the day Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved Black people were free, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The delay is part of what gives the holiday its lasting weight: Freedom had been declared, but it still had to be enforced.

“The festival,” said Terri Gentry, an engagement manager for Black communities at History Colorado, “honors the ancestors who have journeyed the path toward our freedom and teaches us that we must continue to move ahead for our human and civil rights, freedom and equity.”

That history has become more visible since Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021. But advocates say visibility alone is not enough. As the holiday becomes more widely celebrated, they want to make sure its history is not flattened into another summer festival.

“Juneteenth is more than red soda water and barbecue,” said activist Dione Sims. “It’s about giving and keeping the legacy and hope alive.”

Few people have done more to bring Juneteenth into the national spotlight than Opal Lee, the Fort Worth, Texas, activist known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth.” Lee, who turns 100 later this year, spent decades pushing for federal recognition of the holiday. 

Her granddaughter, Sims, has helped carry that work forward through Unity Unlimited, an organization focused on education, community engagement and preserving the meaning of Juneteenth. Sims is also running for Congress in Texas, a campaign she has framed around many of the same themes of civic participation and community advocacy that have shaped her family’s work.

“This is the year of Opal for me, right, and making sure that she knows how much she is appreciated and what being a great humanitarian is,” Sims said. “Long before she became the grandmother of Juneteenth, she was just the community activist, and people would come to her when they needed help, and I think that that’s a powerful legacy to be entrusted with.”

Lee began advocating for Juneteenth recognition in the 1970s, but one of her most visible efforts came in 2016, when she set out on a symbolic walk from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness. The walk covered roughly 1,400 miles, with Lee walking 2.5 miles at a time to represent the two and a half years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the enforcement of freedom in Texas.

Sims said the idea was bold from the beginning.

“At the end of the month,” Sims said, “she told me that she wants to walk to D.C. and I said, ‘You want to walk to talk to President Obama and you want to walk two and a half miles in the morning and two and a half miles in the afternoon?’”

The walk became one of the defining symbols of Lee’s campaign and helped introduce more Americans to the story behind Juneteenth. For Sims, continuing that work means making sure the holiday remains rooted in education, community and action.

“Juneteenth became the vehicle through which education empowerment really blossomed for me,” Sims said. 

In Denver, that spirit will be visible in Five Points, where one of the city’s longest-running Juneteenth traditions returns with three days of programming. This year’s Juneteenth Music Festival begins Friday, June 19, with a Southern Soul Plaza Party at Five Points Plaza, continues Saturday, June 20, with the annual parade and street festival on Welton Street, and wraps Sunday, June 21, with the Juneteenth Hop, a venue crawl through the neighborhood.

The expansion marks a rebound from last year, when the festival’s future was uncertain after several sponsors dropped out and organizers appealed for community support. The Drop 104.7 stepped in as a co-presenter in 2025 and returned this year as the festival expands again.

According to the Juneteenth Music Festival Corporation, this year’s mission is to “celebrate freedom by engaging the community with the historical significance of Juneteenth to further strengthen ties between Denver, Colorado’s historic Five Points neighborhood and its neighbors.”

Five Points is one of Denver’s most important historically Black neighborhoods, and Juneteenth brings residents, business owners, artists, vendors and community organizations together in a place that has carried Black culture in the city for generations.

Local poet Ashlynn Salazar grew up around Denver’s Juneteenth celebration, but only recently experienced the festival as an attendee instead of a volunteer.

“Up until 2024, I’ve walked in the parades, and then when I was old enough, I volunteered and helped run the youth zone,” Salazar said. “2025 was my first year actually seeing the festival instead of being behind the scenes, and my favorite part is the vendors and having the accessibility to support Black and brown businesses.”

Vendors and community partners are expected to include local businesses such as Welton Street Cafe and cultural organizations such as History Colorado. The festival also includes music, food, a youth zone, health resources and space for Black-owned businesses and community organizations to connect with residents.

“Denver’s Juneteenth Festival in the Five Points Neighborhood has been an extraordinary annual event and highlights local small businesses, community support organizations, Black health and wellness, artists, innovators and stages for jazz/R&B music performances,” Gentry said.

To Sims, that balance between celebration and mission is the point. Juneteenth should be joyful, but joy should not erase the struggle behind the holiday or the responsibility that comes with remembering it.

She said one of her grandmother’s sayings has stayed with her: “Do something even if it’s wrong. I now understand really what she meant. It was a matter of not getting stagnated or being fearful of making that step, because you might make a mistake.” 

That lesson is part of why Sims sees Juneteenth as a call to participate, not just a day off or a reason to gather. Freedom, in that sense, is not passive. It is something people inherit, practice, protect and pass on.

“So, it’s really about emancipation, but I have to do something to take advantage of this new status, this new state,” Sims said. “It’s the putting pen to paper, putting action to a state of being that makes emancipation, being free to be all that America promised me I could be as an American, not just a previously enslaved person, but as an American.”