Singer Darlene Benton to headline Woodstock’s Juneteenth Festival

Singer Darlene Benton will be the featured vocalist at the second annual Juneteenth Festival on historic Woodstock Square from 3 to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, June 17.

According to a news release, Benton has been singing since the age of 4, and her path has taken her to gospel and jazz. She has sung throughout the Chicagoland area at such notable venues as the Auditorium Theatre, House of Blues, Chicago Hilton and the Hemmens Culture Center.

This first-ever McHenry County celebration was organized by Gloria Van Hof, a McHenry County Board member, noted Underground Railroad historian and long-time activist along with other community leaders.

The program will feature speakers, musical performances, and readings with food trucks, vendors and fun family activities on the Square.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the date when enslaved persons in Galveston, Texas, who had been cut off from news of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 when the Union took control of the length of the Mississippi River, first heard that they had been freed from an order read by the Union general who arrived with troops to take control of the port. It became an annual festival in cities and towns across Texas in the post-Civil War Era. In this century observations have spread across the United States as a Jubilee day of liberation, according to the release.