Juneteenth festival brings awareness to Bay Area African-American community

The 59th annual San Francisco Juneteenth activities will begin this weekend with a community and media reception event Saturday at 12 p.m. Visit http://www.sfjuneteenth.org/service.htm. The San Francisco festival is the largest gathering of African-Americans in Northern California and began in the early '50s when Wesley Johnson Sr., once owner of the Texas Playhouse on Fillmore Street, invited all Bay Area African-Americans to celebrate June 19 in his lounge.

With African-Americans leaving San Francisco in large numbers, this event could be a rallying cry for the Bay Area community. The Christian Science Monitor reported earlier this week that the San Francisco African-American community has fallen to 6.5 percent in the 2005 Census from 13.4 percent in 1970. Juneteenth celebrations around the country could also receive a moral boost from the U.S. Senate's recent apology for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery."