Celebrate Juneteenth at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park & Visitor Center in Church Creek, Maryland with special programming Friday through Sunday, June 19-21, 2026:
FRIDAY, JUNE 19:
“Thenceforward and Forever Free!”: Collective Reflections on American Freedom
A day of special programming presented by Wild Seed Productions LLC called “Thenceforward and forever free!”: Collective Reflections on American Freedom. From 11am-3pm, there will be a creative arts and history workshop. The public is invited to drop in and partake in a visual design activity, paper crafts, collage, group dialogue, and creative writing. At 1pm, local theater artist and Founder of Soul Shine Theater Garden, Sisi Reid, will perform excerpts from her new one-woman show “Ya Dig.” The performance will be followed by a poetry share, communal storytelling, and the reveal of a “North Star Sculpture” in honor of Juneteenth and our North Star, Harriet Tubman. Activities will run all afternoon and folks are welcome to drop in and come and go as you please. All ages and skill levels are welcome! Call 410-221-2290 with any questions.
SATURDAY, JUNE 20:
10am-2pm: Traditional Children’s Games – Enjoy Traditional Children’s Games including marbles, mancala, jacks, and more in the Legacy Garden.
1pm: Beyond Spirituals: Black Folk Music Before the Civil War – Join Ranger Robin to explore the unseen African origins of the banjo and the festival music enslaved people made for it before the Civil War.
SUNDAY, JUNE 21, 1-4pm:
Author Talk and Book Signing with Robin Michel Caudell
Visit the Tubman Visitor Center for an author talk and book signing with Robin Michel Caudell, author of “Black Heel Strings: A Choptank Memoir.”
In this lyrical memoir, Robin Michel Caudell meditates on memory and identity as she traces her childhood in a Black family navigating poverty and racism on the Delmarva Peninsula. Many know Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman’s exodus stories out of bondage in rural Maryland, but what about the people who stayed? It is from this place and history that Caudell’s story begins. Growing up in the segregated 1960s, Caudell is the living legacy of the ones who did not run away and of the Free People of Color/Christianized Indians who partnered with their enslaved brethren in a precarious dance of love in Chesapeake Country.