Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday's name is a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth", as it was on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War. In the Civil War period, slavery came to an end in various areas of the United States at different times. Many enslaved Southerners escaped, demanded wages, stopped work, or took up arms against the Confederacy of slave states. In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all enslaved were freed by the victorious Union Army, or abolition laws in some of the remaining U.S. states. When the national abolition amendment was ratified in December, the remaining enslaved in Delaware and in Kentucky were freed.
Hoodoo is a set of spiritual practices, traditions, and beliefs that were created by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities and elements of indigenous botanical knowledge. Practitioners of Hoodoo are called rootworkers, conjure doctors, conjure men or conjure women, and root doctors. Regional synonyms for Hoodoo include rootwork and conjure. As a syncretic spiritual system, it also incorporates beliefs from Islam brought over by enslaved West African Muslims, and Spiritualism. Scholars define Hoodoo as a folk religion. It is a syncretic religion between two or more cultural religions, in this case being African indigenous spirituality and Abrahamic religion.
This section of the timeline of United States history concerns events from before the lead up to the American Revolution.
Junkanoo is a festival that was originated during the period of African chattel slavery in British American colonies. It is practiced most notably in The Bahamas, Jamaica and Belize, and historically in North Carolina and Miami, where there are significant settlements of West Indian people during the post-emancipation era. In the present day, there are considerable variations in performance and spelling, but there are the shared elements of masquerade, drumming, dance, and parading.
Mardi Gras Indians are African American carnival revelers in New Orleans, Louisiana, who dress up for Mardi Gras in suits influenced by the cultural practices of Native Americans, West Africans, and Afro-Caribbeans. The music, dance, and regalia from these cultures created the Mardi Gras Indian tradition during the era of slavery in Louisiana that continues today. This cultural tradition is a part of the African and African diaspora decorative aesthetic, and is an African-American art form.
Emancipation Day is observed in many former European colonies in the Caribbean and areas of the United States on various dates to commemorate the emancipation of slaves of African descent.
In the United States, a patroon was a landholder with manorial rights to large tracts of land in the 17th-century Dutch colony of New Netherland on the east coast of North America. Through the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions of 1629, the Dutch West India Company first started to grant this title and land to some of its invested members. These inducements to foster colonization and settlement are the basis for the patroon system. By the end of the 18th century, virtually all of the American states had abolished primogeniture and entail; thus patroons and manors evolved into simply large estates subject to division and leases.
Philipsburg Manor House is a historic house in the Upper Mills section of the former sprawling Colonial-era estate known as Philipsburg Manor. Together with a water mill and trading site the house is operated as a non-profit museum by Historic Hudson Valley. It is located on US 9 in the village of Sleepy Hollow, New York.
The Kingdom of Kongo was a kingdom in Central Africa. It was located in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Southern of Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. At its greatest extent it reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Kwango River in the east, and from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The kingdom consisted of several core provinces ruled by the Manikongo, the Portuguese version of the Kongo title Mwene Kongo, meaning "lord or ruler of the Kongo kingdom", but its sphere of influence extended to neighbouring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Loango, Ndongo, and Matamba, the latter two located in what is Angola today.
Mvemba a Nzinga, Nzinga Mbemba, Funsu Nzinga Mvemba or Dom Alfonso, also known as King Afonso I, was the sixth ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo from the Lukeni kanda dynasty and ruled in the first half of the 16th century. He reigned over the Kongo Empire from 1509 to late 1542 or 1543.
Historic Hudson Valley is a not-for-profit educational and historic preservation organization headquartered in Tarrytown, New York. The organization runs tours and events at five historic properties in Westchester County, in the lower Hudson River Valley.
A shout, ring shout, Hallelujah march or victory march is a Christian religious practice in which worshipers move in a circle while praying and clapping their hands, sometimes shuffling and stomping their feet as well. Despite the name, shouting aloud is not an essential part of the ritual march, which varies by congregation and locality.
The trafficking of enslaved Africans to what became New York began as part of the Dutch slave trade. The Dutch West India Company trafficked eleven enslaved Africans to New Amsterdam in 1626, with the first slave auction held in New Amsterdam in 1655. With the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies, more than 42% of New York City households enslaved African people by 1703, often as domestic servants and laborers. Others worked as artisans or in shipping and various trades in the city. Enslaved Africans were also used in farming on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, as well as the Mohawk Valley region.
Angolan Americans are an ethnic group of Americans of Angolan descent or Angolan immigrants. According to estimates, by the year 2000 there were 1,642 people descended from Angolan immigrants in the United States. However, the number of Angolan Americans is difficult to determine. Many African-Americans are descendants of Angolan enslaved people. In 1644, most of the 6,900 slaves bought on the African coast to clear the forests, lay roads, build houses and public buildings, and grow food came from the established stations in Angola.
The area of New York's Capital District, also known as the Albany metropolitan area, has seen prominent historical events, artistic creations, and unique contributions to the culture of the United States since the 17th century. The largest city in the area, Albany, consistently ranks high on lists of top cities/metro areas for culture, such as being 23rd in the book Cities Ranked & Rated. The Albany-Schenectady-Troy metro area ranked 12th among large metro areas, and Glens Falls ranked 12th among the small metro areas, in Sperling's Best Places, and Expansion Management gave the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area five Stars, its highest ranking, for quality of life features.
Philipsburg Manor was a manor located north of New York City in Westchester County in the Province of New York. Netherlands-born Frederick Philipse I and two partners made the initial purchase of land that had been part of a Dutch patroonship owned by Adriaen van der Donck. Philipse subsequently bought his partners out and added more land before being granted a royal charter in 1693 for the 52,000 acres (21,000 ha) estate, becoming its first lord.
Afro-Venezuelans are Venezuelans of African descent. Afro-Venezuelans are mostly descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the Western Hemisphere during the Atlantic slave trade. This term also sometimes refers to the combining of African and other cultural elements found in Venezuelan society such as the arts, traditions, music, religion, race, and language.
Jeroen Dewulf is a Belgian scholar specializing in Folklore Studies, Dutch culture, the Dutch language, German Studies, slavery and African-American culture, Caribbean Studies, and Latin American Studies. He is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
The African American Heritage Trail of Westchester County in New York was created in 2004 to help preserve and interpret the historic landmark places that help tell the narratives of women and men of African descent who have made significant contributions to an American identity. The initial list had 13 sites. Westchester County historian and Schulman History Honoree Dr. Larry Spruill was lead consultant and researcher for the project.
Dutch people have had a continuous presence in New York City for nearly 400 years, being the earliest European settlers. New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. Because of the history of Dutch colonization, Dutch culture, politics, law, architecture, and language played a formative role in shaping the culture of the city. The Dutch were the majority in New York City until the early 1700s and the Dutch language was commonly spoken until the mid to late-1700s.
