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Scope and Contents The first Juneteenth or Freedom Day program was organized in Albuquerque in 1976 by Joe Powdrell, of Powdrell’s Barbeque Restaurant. Also assisting in the early years were Nazim Pasha, an American Muslim, Ed Johnson, a vocalist and employee of U.S. West, and Clarence Smith. Juneteenth, a combination of June and nineteen, commemorates, June 19, 1865, when General Gordon Granger of the Union Army read Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to the last group of 250,000 Black slaves in Galveston,...