What do monuments teach us about slavery, emancipation, and the long struggle for civil rights?
In honor of Juneteenth, join us at Mount Auburn Cemetery for a walking tour that explores how public memory is constructed in stone, landscape, and story.
Juneteenth, now a national holiday, commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Texas to enforce the freedom promised by the Emancipation Proclamation more than two years earlier—revealing the gap between the declaration of freedom and its lived reality.
This tour explores the lives and memorials of individuals connected to the long struggle for freedom and civil rights, including authors, abolitionists, activists, and political leaders. As we move through the cemetery landscape, we’ll also examine how monuments shape public memory—sometimes clarifying the past, and sometimes simplifying it.