Houston, TX––The Houston chapter of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) will host its 4th Annual “Juneteenth (Not Yet Uhuru): Freedom and Music Festival” on Saturday, June 18, 2016 from 12-9pm at the 5th Ward Community Garden, which is located at 3707 Brill Street.
Attendees will be able to browse arts and crafts, taste foods and drinks, and listen to hip hop, blues, reggae, rhythm and blues, soul and gospel music.
The event will feature live musical performances from R & B artist Archie “Tighten Up” Bell and Khalia K. Nice, Jazz and Hip Hop diva. Vocalist Jewel Brown, formerly lead singer with The Louis Armstrong Band; Ray Williams and the Major Tones; R & B sensation, Mr. Las Vegas and The Rapper Slaughter will also perform live at this year’s Juneteenth.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), AAPDEP International Director Dr. Aisha Fields and International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (INPDUM) President Herdosia Bentum will be the keynote speakers.
Juneteenth is the oldest holiday acknowledging the so-called emancipation of enslaved Africans in Texas on June 19, 1865—over two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.
This event will stress to all who attend that 151 years later, since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Africans in the United States are still not free in the U.S. or any other place in the world.
The Emancipation Proclamation is just another empty, worthless document
The State tries to convince the masses of Africans that the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s Union Army freed African people.
Over 200,000 African soldiers fought in the U.S. Civil War; fighting primarily to free Africans, but also to save Lincoln’s Union.
Africans understood then that the only way we could be a free people was by fighting for our liberation.
Just as we were beginning to be freed from our chains two years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the State was reworking itself so as to maintain the colonial social order.
By 1900, the modicum of political and economic gains Africans realized following legal emancipation were largely destroyed as a result of Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of white violence.
Today, Africans remain an imprisoned population within U.S. colonial borders along with Indigenous and Mexican peoples.
U.S. African revolutionaries during the ‘60s and ‘70s learned from our ancestors who fought and died for freedom during the Civil War that no collaboration with the State will liberate us.
Chairman Omali speaks
At the 2011 festival Chairman Omali Yeshitela spoke about the importance of our identification with Africa and economic self-reliance to achieving real freedom.
This year he will discuss the meaning of Juneteenth during the era of Barack Hussein Obama and Donald Trump.
His speech will the stress the significance of this period in our history in this country.
Access to the ballot, school desegregation, integration, an increase in the number of black elected official, and the creation of the black middle class, amongst other useless “gains,” have been put before Africans––and particularly working class Africans––by the ruling class and its black lackies as evidence of progress and freedom for African people.
Yet white power remains intact, and Africans are tired of it.
The Party and the Uhuru Movement are experiencing rapid growth, indicating that Africans all over the United States are coming to understand that the only solution to our problems is revolution.
No reformist compromises will free our people.
Our interests are diametrically opposed to those of the State.
This year’s “Juneteenth (Not Yet Uhuru): Freedom and Music Festival” will underscore the need for Africans everywhere to improve our health and wellness, build our own independent African institutions, and organize for Black Power!
Register to the Eventbrite!
For vending information contact Jackie at 832-647-3550.
For speaking and performing and more information contact Omowale Kefing 214-707-7309 or email houston@developmentforafrica.org.
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