Juneteenth’s Home Community Engagement Sessions

Juneteenth’s Home will launch the first major milestone of its master‑planning process this month with two days of community engagement sessions designed to introduce the planning team, gather public insight, and begin shaping a national home for Juneteenth history and culture in Galveston.

The sessions, led by SmithGroup and Sources Cultural Resources Management (CRM), will take place at Ball High School’s cafeteria (4115 Avenue O) on the following dates:

Saturday 10/24 | 10am – 2pm10 – 11am | Open house, team meet and greet11:30am – 1 pm | Presentation / focus and feedback engagement1pm – 2pm | Open house, team meet and greet Sunday 10/25 | 2pm – 6pm2 – 3 pm | Open house, team meet and greet3:30pm – 5 pm | Presentation / focus and feedback engagement5pm – 6pm | Open house, team meet and greet

The community sessions are open to the public. All are welcome and invited to attend.

Dr. Calinda Lee, Principal of Sources CRM who serves as Interpretive Project Lead for Juneteenth’s Home, said the goal is for the community to help shape the project from the start. She said:

“Juneteenth is a living tradition that Galveston’s community has practiced, protected, and reimagined across generations. Its truth lives in families, churches, and neighborhoods as much as in any archive. Our job is not to arrive with a story already written, but to listen and to help residents shape which stories are told and how.” The October sessions mark the beginning of a year‑long, community‑driven master‑planning process that will guide the future of Juneteenth’s Home – an initiative established to ensure Galveston, the birthplace of Juneteenth, becomes the national center for Juneteenth storytelling, education, and cultural preservation. Juneteenth’s Home is being facilitated by Galveston Historical Foundation’s African American Heritage Committee in partnership with city and state leaders. In August the initiative announced it had hired an award-winning team of cultural‑planning and museum design firms – SmithGroup, Sources CRM and The Projects Group – to lead the master-planning process.

“We are approaching this first round of engagement with curiosity and a commitment to listening,” said Dayton Schroeter, Vice President and Design Director at SmithGroup and Architectural & Master Plan Design Lead for Juneteenth’s Home. “We want to introduce our team, establish an open dialogue, and listen closely to the aspirations, ideas, hopes, and questions that matter most to the community. What we hear will help shape the values and guiding principles that anchor the master plan.”

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ABOUT THE MASTER PLANNING PROCESS | The master‑planning process will span approximately one year and include community and descendant engagement, interpretive and visitor‑experience frameworks, site evaluation, governance modeling, and an implementation roadmap. The process will culminate in a Future State & Recommendations Report and a Final Master Plan outlining a clear, community‑aligned path forward for Juneteenth’s Home.

ABOUT JUNETEENTH’S HOME | Juneteenth’s Home is a national initiative that honors Galveston as the birthplace of Juneteenth and seeks to build a home for its history, stories, and future. The effort is facilitated by Galveston Historical Foundation’s African American Heritage Committee (AAHC) in collaboration with city leaders and state officials. Juneteenth’s Home is guided by a community‑driven master‑planning process led by SmithGroup — in collaboration with Sources CRM and The Projects Group — one of the nation’s leading cultural‑planning and museum‑design teams. Together with local residents, descendants, cultural organizations, historians, and partners, the team is shaping a vision for how Juneteenth’s history, stories, and future should be honored. The initiative explores a range of possibilities, from programs and public spaces to the potential development of a landmark institution or cultural anchor. For more information, visit www.juneteenthshome.com.

ABOUT GALVESTON HISTORICAL FOUNDATION’S AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE COMMITTEE | For more than two decades, Galveston Historical Foundation‘s African American Heritage Committee (AAHC) has been a driving force in preserving, documenting, and elevating Galveston’s African American history, especially the story of Juneteenth. Founded in 2002 at Ashton Villa, the AAHC has protected historic sites like Rosewood Cemetery; developed Galveston’s Juneteenth exhibit And Still We Rise…; and secured multiple Texas Historical Commission markers honoring Juneteenth, the Middle Passage, and local pioneers. Publications by the AAHC and its members – Galveston’s African American Historic Places & Pioneers (2005), African Americans of Galveston (2013), Lost Restaurants of Galveston’s African American Community (2021), and Galveston’s Juneteenth Story (2024) – form a growing archive of the island’s Black history and cultural memory. As facilitator of the Juneteenth’s Home initiative, the AAHC brings this long-standing record of stewardship, research, and community leadership to the ongoing work of honoring Galveston’s Juneteenth story.