President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris started this year’s Juneteenth celebration early this year with a celebrity-filled celebration at the White House. The event featured music and entertainment, Biden’s warning about the importance of this year’s election, and even Harris showing off her dance moves.

‘More equal, more fair and more free’

For the second year in a row, the White House celebrated Juneteenth with a concert and public event. This year’s celebration included artists such as Doug E. Fresh, Gladys Knight, Patty LaBelle, Charlie Wilson and several others, with comedian Roy Wood, Jr. hosting.

Reminded the audience that, as a Senator, she cosponsored the bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, and that as Vice President she stood next to President Biden as he signed the bill into law. Harris rattled off a list of achievements of the administration, and she described Juneteenth as part of “our ongoing fight to build a nation that is more equal, more fair and more free.”

Harris dances and Biden delivers warning about the future

The vice president did more than just speak at Monday’s event. Harris briefly returned to the stage during a performance by Kirk Franklin, who brought Vice President Harris onstage, where she sang and danced along hand-in-hand with the gospel singer.

Biden, taking a serious tone as he alluded to the current presidential race, warned of “old ghosts in new garments trying to take us back.” Biden warned of forces “making it harder for Black people to vote or have your vote counted” and trying to “erase or rewrite history. The president declared to the crowd that “our history is not just about the past, it’s about our present and our future. It’s whether that future is a future for all of us, not just some of us.”

Yesterday’s even exemplifies the place that Juneteenth has taken as the newest federal holiday and the importance that it has long held for Black Americans. With the Biden-Harris campaign hoping to rely on Black voters to win a close presidential race, events like the Juneteenth concert have been opportunities for the administration to tout its achievements and draw the contrast between its vision for the future and that of its opponents.

Kamala HarrisKirk Franklin