The Portland Timbers and Thorns will honor this weekend's Juneteenth holiday through a series of initiatives during the June 19 and 20 matches at Providence Park, doing so in partnership with Black Players for Change, the Black Women's Players Collective, Major League Soccer, and the National Women's Soccer League.
Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of slaves in the United States. The holiday recognizes the June 19, 1865, military order that enforced emancipation in Texas, the westernmost state of the union at the time. The order came nearly three years after Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and two-and-a-half years after emancipation of slaves in the Confederacy went into effect.