Winter Garden Celebrates Juneteenth 2023

Winter Garden on Saturday marked Juneteenth — a celebration of the day in 1865 Galveston, Texas, when the last of the enslaved people in the Confederate states were released from servitude by 2,000 federal soldiers under Union General Gordon Granger. The celebratory event was held at Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church in East Winter Garden. A thunderstorm abbreviated the festivities, but not before the Dream Center's Pastor Rainey McFadden recited the poem "I Am Free," and the city manager, Jon Williams, offered some words for the occasion. 

"Our attendance today at this celebration marks positive and significant progress and freedom we have made as a nation, state and city," he said. "With that, I'm also reminded that our work at preserving freedom for all is not over, in fact, it's just beginning."