Riding high off the historic Knicks championship win and beautiful summer weather, Black New Yorkers were out in full force on June 19 to celebrate Juneteenth, commemorating the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in the Galveston, Tex., area to notify the enslaved Black people there that they had actually been free for two years.
But today, civil rights and reparations remain contentious issues, five years after Juneteenth became a federal holiday.
New York State officially made Juneteenth a paid holiday for state employees in 2020. It went further in 2023 by launching the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies, a commission tasked with studying the state’s legacy of slavery, the resulting systemic discrimination, and its continuing impact today. The reparations law notes that the first enslaved Africans arrived in New York in 1627.
“Juneteenth is not a celebration merely of laws being enforced. It is a celebration of the joy, determination, and resilience of Black Americans despite centuries of delayed freedom, of rights withheld, and of opportunity restricted. It is a celebration of barbecues and singing, Double Dutch and red punch,” said Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani at the RISE Juneteenth bash in Herbert Von King Park in Brooklyn on June 19.
Mamdani also hosted a Juneteenth celebration at Gracie Mansion on June 16.
“Even when Black people were denied the right to gather in public places for the holiday, they purchased private tracts of land and turned them into parks where they could stand together in solidarity,” he said. “That spirit of solidarity has a long history here in New York City as well.”
As of now, the anticipated state reparations report has been delayed twice. The commission was under a deadline to release the report last year, but it has been extended to 2027 and finally to 2029.
Mamdani, who supported the reparations commission as an assemblymember, said that he hadn’t spoken to commissioners about the delay but was proud to have voted for it.
“Juneteenth reminds us that we must be very intentional about preserving and delivering our history and culture, as we actively protect our legacy and narrative. Celebrating Juneteenth with the raising of our flag and hosting a community-focused breakfast and a parade is part of reinforcing our demands for reparations,” added Harlem Senator Cordell Cleare in a statement.
Cleare was another elected official who worked to pass the state’s initial reparations commission bill. This year, she helped organize Harlem’s 33rd Annual Juneteenth commemoration with a flag raising, parade, and community breakfast.
Meanwhile, at the city level, council members passed the reparations bill in 2024 along with proposed ballot measures. The city’s Commission on Racial Equity (CORE) released its report, “Advancing Truth, Healing, Reconciliation, and Reparations in New York City,” in 2025. To raise awareness about the reparations movement in the city, CORE hosted a major Juneteenth celebration and concert in Central Park this year.
“It is a recognition of the fact that while we celebrate Juneteenth today, we also have to recognize the long history of Black Americans and Black New Yorkers, not just facing enslavement, but also having opportunities be denied and withheld on the basis of their race. And it’s not enough to simply recognize that,” Mamdani told the Amsterdam News regarding reparations at the city level.
“There also has to be an approach that does so in more than just language. And so I’m looking forward to both of those things progressing,” he continued. “And I think at the city level, I know that there have been efforts to conduct outreach as to even just the question of what does that look like? Who does that apply to? These are significant questions that I think require a lot of public engagement.”
CORE is slated to release a final report on July 1, 2027, and then begin implementing its reconciliation plan in 2028.
The state has several more in-person and virtual public hearings on reparations scheduled throughout 2026. This includes sessions at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester and the Lincoln Park Conservancy’s History & Culture Center in New Rochelle on June 26, and the Connected Communities Auditorium in Rochester on July 10.
