Hundreds of youth from around greater Portland march up Congress Street to the Abyssinian Meetinghouse on Newbury Street during a Juneteenth event June 19. The young people’s rally and march, organizers said, were held both to draw attention to the Black Lives Matter movement and to mark the day in 1865 that slaves in Texas were notified, 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, that they were free. The Abyssinian Meetinghouse was a stop on the Underground Railroad and was an important place for African-American social and political life in the 1800s. Michael Kelley / The Forecaster

Gracia Bareti, a Juneteenth rally organizer and a recent Westbrook High School graduate, speaks to the crowd outside Portland City Hall June 19. Juneteenth is the oldest national celebration of the end of slavery in the United States, but something that isn’t taught in local schools, she said. Michael Kelley / The Forecaster