Juneteenth: America's Second Independence Day

Dr. Howard Robinson looks at the people, places, and events that mark the origins and development of Juneteenth as a local coastal Texas celebration. He then traces the efforts that transformed the Galveston, Texas celebration into Juneteenth becoming a national holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States of America.

Dr. Howard Robinson is the Associate Library Director for Archives and Cultural Heritage Services at Alabama State University (ASU). At ASU Robinson also serves as a historian with the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture. Prior to his work with the University Archives, Dr. Robinson spent seventeen years as the ASU Archivist, where he helped establish the school’s archives as an important repository for materials related to the modern civil rights movement, with a focus on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1961 Freedom Rides, student protest of the 1960s, as well as the voting rights campaign of the 1960s. He attended Alabama State University where he earned B.A. in 1986, and a M.A. degree in 1993. Before leaving Montgomery, Robinson worked at WSFA Television and with the Alabama Department of Archives and History. In 1999, Robinson earned a Ph.D. degree in American History from the University of Akron.

For more information, contact Holley Wesley at 205-445-1117 or hwesley@oneallibrary.org.