juneteenth_ceremony.jpgMIAMI — The 19th annual Sunrise Ancestral Remembrance of the Middle Passage Ceremony will take place Sunday at the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park.

Participants will give thanks and remember the millions of African captives who endured the horrors of the Middle Passage or Atlantic slave trade over more than four centuries.

The ceremony also honors Native American heritage, particularly at the sacred site of the beach where three Seminoles were killed during the Florida Wars in 1838 and which later became Miami’s only “Colored Beach” during the segregation era following a protest in 1945.

The observance, open to all and held each year on the Sunday closest to the summer solstice, falls on Fathers’ Day this year and coincides also with the Juneteenth holiday, the commemoration of June 19, 1865, when the last of the enslaved population in the U.S., in east Texas, received word that the Civil War had ended and that slavery as a legal institution had been abolished.

The ceremony will begin at 5:30 a.m. at the park, 4020 Virginia Beach Dr., off the Rickenbacker Causeway, on Virginia Key. Go to the second entrance to the park, at the second traffic signal on Virginia Key, just before the Bear Cut Bridge to Key Biscayne.

For further information call 786-260-1246 or 305-904-7620.