NOVA Parks News

NOVA Parks and Fairfax County NAACP Celebrate Juneteenth; Honor Emancipation History of Bull Run Regional Park 
For immediate release June 16, 2025

NOVA Parks and the Fairfax County NAACP will host their Fourth Annual Juneteenth celebration to recognize the largest private emancipation of the enslaved, commemorate the cemetery where many of the freed are interred, and visit the site where Blacks and whites worshipped as early as 1775. The event will take place at 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 21 at Bull Run Regional Park, located at 7700 Bull Run Drive, Centreville, Virginia 20121. 

The Juneteenth celebration will include remarks from NOVA Parks Board Vice Chair Paul Baldino, Chair of Fairfax NAACP’s Religious Affairs Committee Eliza Selander, President and CEO of the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia Renee Byng Yancey, Harris Family Representative Chrystal Gaskins, and many state and local elected officials. Girl Scouts of the Nation’s Capital will lead the procession to the location of the freedmen cemetery, where Janay Peebles Trent will provide musical performances and guest speaker Bishop Brett Fuller will provide remarks. An ice cream social supported by a generous donor to the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia will take place following the ceremony. 

NOVA Parks used ground-penetrating radar to discover that more than 90 people are buried in the former Harris Family Cemetery, located at Bull Run Regional Park. Interpretive signage unveiled at the 2022 Juneteenth celebration tells the story of Robert Carter III, who once owned the 65,000 acres of land. After converting to the Baptist faith, Carter built a church that was open to both Black and white residents of the area. Carter emancipated 500 enslaved people in the 1790s and allowed them to own land, resulting in a thriving Freedmen's community at Bull Run 70 years before the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation. Those buried at the cemetery were descendants of enslaved people freed by Carter, including the parents of Alfred W. Harris, who served as Alexandria City Councilmember and State Delegate and chartered the first Virginia public college for African Americans. 

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and Emancipation Day, marks the event on June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers told 250,000 enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, that the Civil War was over, and they were therefore free. The Emancipation Proclamation had freed slaves in 1863, but it was not enforced until long after in many places. Celebrated since the late 1800s across the United States, Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021. 

Visit novaparks.com/ParkHistory for information about Robert Carter III, the Harris Family Cemetery, and more stories uncovered in Northern Virginia regional parks.