Nashville’s Juneteenth Celebration / The Annual Music City Freedom Festival is a free community event Saturday, June 14th & Sunday, June 15th, 2025, in Historic Hadley – Lillard Park. Come out and join in the festivities each day from 12 Noon to 8 pm. It will be full of family friendly fun for all, with local food trucks, local vendors to shop from, and even inflatables for the children. They will have local live bands performing, and a local live DJ mixing it up. So, bring your lawn chairs and enjoy the show, food, and the shopping.
The Music City Freedom Festival, a Juneteenth Celebration celebrates our culture, our community, our music, our food, and our community’s businesses. The last five festivals were amazing. They have had hundreds of small businesses and food vendors throughout the years. They have also showcased some of Nashville’s most talented music and dance acts. With coverage about the Festival from various news, radio, digital, and social media platforms, they had an outreach of over a million Nashville residents.
This Free Music City Freedom Festival community event was created to celebrate our businesses, organizations, and artists throughout Nashville. The goal is to continue to provide an annual city-wide event that celebrates the emancipation of the enslaved African in America, as well as celebrating our culture, our community, our music, our food, and our community’s businesses and organizations.
“Due to the political climate, and anti DEI initiatives, fundraising for this years Festival has been extremely difficult,” according to the organizers Mike Harris and Julius Lamont Jackson. “However, we are committed to keeping this free, family friendly celebration, in the heart of Middle Tennessee, alive. All vendor fees, sponsorships, and contributions go directly to the operational budget of the Festival. Therefore, we are still seeking sponsorship and donations. If interested in sponsoring or contributing to this year or future Music City Freedom Festival celebrations, please email us at info@musiccityfreedomfest.com
“This year, we have a few speakers from the community that will take the stage: Jonathon Williamson, Nashville NAACP President; Joseph P. Day, Circuit Court Clerk; Courtney Teasley, Attorney and Author; just to name a few. For local artists, our lineup was curated by our Musical Director William “Black Sax” Banks. Here’s a few artists on the lineup: Phillip Jackson (Headliner) and Sarina Joi (Headliner).”
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863.
The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.
