UK history professor to speak at Hopkinsville Juneteenth celebration

University of Kentucky history professor Dr. Gerald Smith will be the guest speaker for a Juneteenth celebration at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 15, at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hopkinsville-Christian County.

Hopkinsville representatives of historically Black fraternities and sororities, known as the Divine Nine, are the event organizers, said Bonnie Lynch. There will be food trucks and vendors on the grounds. There will be a talent showcase and a fashion show.

Smith has written, edited or co-edited five books, including “The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia.” His most recent work is “Slavery and Freedom in the Bluegrass State: Revisiting My Old Kentucky Home,” an edited collection of essays that received the 2023 University Press Publication award from the Kentucky Historical Society.

He has been the pastor at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Lexington since 2011 and previously preached at Farristown Baptist Church in Berea.

Smith is the host of a radio series, “Racial Justice and Equality” on WEKU, the NPR station at Eastern Kentucky University. He has appeared in documentaries broadcast on CBS, NBC, ESPN, TruTV and KET. He has served on numerous boards, including those representing the Kentucky Historical Society Foundation, the Mary Todd Lincoln House and the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage.

Juneteenth is a national holiday that celebrates emancipation gained by enslaved Americans at the end of the Civil War.

The holiday commemorates the events of June 19, 1865, when Gen. Gordon Granger and thousands of federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the Civil War had ended and to ensure all enslaved people were freed. Although President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, it was ignored by Confederate states and not enforced in the South until the end of the war.

Congress adopted legislation establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday in 2021, and President Biden signed it into law in June of that year. It was the first federal holiday established since Martin Luther King’s birthday in 1983.