Juneteenth Audiobooks - All Ages

What Is Juneteenth?

What Was?

By: Kirsti Jewel & Who HQ
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 1 hour 1 minute

Discover more about Juneteenth, the important holiday that celebrates the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

On June 19, 1865, a group of enslaved men, women, and children in Texas gathered around a Union solder and listened as he read the most remarkable words they would ever hear. They were no longer enslaved: they were free. The... Read more

How the Word Is Passed

A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

By: Clint Smith
Narrated by: Clint Smith
Length: 10 hours 6 minutes

“Poet Clint Smith’s personal, intimate examination of sites of historical significance to slavery is as soulful and accessible as it is urgent and important. The opening chapter on Jefferson’s Monticello is one of the best chapters of American historical writing in recent memory, and should be required reading on the legacy of America’s founders.... Read more

Juneteenth: Our Day of Freedom

By: Sharon Dennis Wyeth
Narrated by: Sharon Dennis Wyeth
Length: 11 minutes

Some call it Freedom Day; some call it Emancipation Day; some call it Juneteenth. Learn more about this important holiday that celebrates the end of chattel slavery in the United States in this Step 3 History Reader.

On June 19, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, a group of enslaved men, women, and children in Texas gathered.... Read more

Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free

The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth

By: Alice Faye Duncan
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 18 minutes

Booklist starred reviewBlack activist Opal Lee had a vision of Juneteenth as a holiday for everyone. This true story celebrates Black joy and inspires children to see their dreams blossom. Growing up in Texas, Opal knew the history of Juneteenth, but she soon discovered that many Americans had never heard of the holiday. Join Opal on her... Read more

Juneteenth

A Novel

By: Ralph Ellison
Narrated by: Joe Morton
Length: 14 hours 6 minutes

From the author of bestselling Invisible Man—the classic novel of African-American experience—this long-awaited second novel tells an evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. Brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master.

"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying... Read more

On Juneteenth

By: Annette Gordon-Reed
Narrated by: Karen Chilton
Length: 3 hours 44 minutes

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the nation’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas
and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction... Read more