PHOTOS: Winter Garden Juneteenth Community Celebration

The city of Winter Garden hosted a Juneteenth community celebration at the newly named Charlie Mae Wilder Park on June 15. 

As part of the celebration; which saw free food, games and a litany of speakers and performances, Mayor John Rees and members of the Winter Garden Commission named the park at 1203 E Plant St. after local advocate Charlie Mae Wilder.

The celebration of the holiday Juneteenth, which is officially on June 19th, or as it is also known — Emancipation Day of Juneteenth National Independence Day — celebrates the freedom of all enslaved African-American people in the U.S. 

Following the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, it took troops more than two years to reach the westernmost Confederate state of Texas and announce the freedom of those enslaved to the last state of the Confederacy on June 19, 1865. 

That day became known as Juneteenth by the newly freed people in Texas and the reason it is celebrated today.