We’ve Come This Far By Faith”

The Lafayette County Juneteenth Foundation Board has announced its 2025 celebration. It is the “20th Year Juneteenth Anniversary Celebration - We’ve Come This Far By Faith.”  The event will begin on Thursday, June 19, 2025, through Sunday, June 22, 2025.  

Col (Ret) Ricky J. Cosby will be the guest speaker for our event on Friday, June 20, 2025. Col (Ret) Cosby has extensive education and expertise which included the Commander of the B-2 Test Team.  He is a former NATO Defense College Senior National Representative (Rome, Italy) and is currently a Sentinel Missile Staff Engineer (Vandenberg SFB, CA).  He and his wife, Charlotte, are the proud parents of eleven children.

                                                 

   Col (Ret) Ricky J. Cosby         

Our event will be held in Higginsville and Lexington, Missouri. A detailed schedule and location details will be provided in the coming weeks. 

There will be an exciting opening ceremony, music, drama, historical presentations, educational activities for children, a welcome dinner, field trips, gospel concert, voter education and much more! 

All activities are free.  Everyone is welcome. All children under 14 must be accompanied by an adult.

Please contact our president, Arron Haynes, for questions you might have.  Call or text Haynes at 816-419-3704.

Lafayette County Juneteenth Foundation 

Mission statement is to develop and implement a one-day festival that promotes the celebration of family, celebrates African American freedom, and cultivates mutual involvement of social service entities, and economic participation of the county-wide business community.

Juneteenth celebrations have been held in our county since 2005. Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery. June 19, 1865, union soldiers, led by General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with 2000 Federal troops to issue the order that the Civil War had ended and that all slaves were free. This was two and half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that had become official on January 1, 1863. 

The first Lafayette County, MO Juneteenth celebration was held in 2005.  Annual observances have occurred during most years since our start.  In 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth a national holiday.  Juneteenth National Independence Day is the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

The Lafayette County Juneteenth Foundation is a nonprofit organization.