Walk Ride Remember a Juneteenth Celebration , Slow Roll, Walk , Art, Meal
Walk. Ride. Remember. A Juneteenth Journey from Emancipation to Empowerment
Join the Cultural Wellness Center for an unforgettable Juneteenth celebration on Saturday, June 14, 2025, as we bring Black history to life through movement, memory, and community.
This immersive experience begins with the Juneteenth Freedom Roll, a slow-paced bike ride departing from Venture Bikes that visits pivotal African American landmarks in South Minneapolis. As we ride, we’ll trace the local and national road to freedom, from Fort Snelling—where Dred and Harriet Scott began their legal fight for liberation—to the broader legacy of emancipation across the country.
At 11 a.m., we’ll gather at CEPRO Park for a stirring reenactment of General Order No. 3, the historic moment when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas were finally informed of their freedom—more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
From there, we’ll journey on foot in a symbolic Freedom Walk to Midtown Global Market, where the celebration continues with storytelling vignettes, a live theatrical performance of an imagined conversation with Dred and Harriet Scott while enslaved at Fort Snelling titled “We Claimed the Soil: An Interview with Harriet and Dred Scott,” and a vibrant community meal.
It is a haunting irony that Dred and Harriet Scott were enslaved at Fort Snelling, in the heart of what is now Minnesota—a state often imagined as part of the “free North.” Their presence there shatters the myth that slavery was confined to the South, revealing instead a deeper truth about the nation’s complicity. Minnesota’s geographic position at the intersection of westward expansion and northern abolitionist sentiment made it a paradoxical frontier—a place where freedom and bondage coexisted. Fort Snelling, perched above the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, was both a military outpost and a gateway for colonial conquest and human captivity. The Scotts’ time in Minnesota complicates its legacy: it is a state that became a Union stronghold in the Civil War, yet its early development was entangled with the institution of slavery and the displacement of Indigenous peoples. Their story invites us to confront the uncomfortable but necessary truth that the roots of racial injustice stretch far beyond the Mason-Dixon Line—and that even here, in the North Star State, the battle for freedom has always been unfinished.
This Juneteenth, we connect the past to the present—Galveston to Minneapolis, our ancestors to our children, and struggle to liberation. We invite you to move with us in honor, reflection, and hope.
Free and open to the public. Bring your bike, your walking shoes, and if you need a bike – we have you covered. Bring your spirit of community solidaity and liberatioin. Juneteenth, JuneTeenth, Juneteenth