Black communities in Kentucky and Tennessee have celebrated the eighth of August for more than 150 years. For many Black people in Kentucky and Tennessee, the 8 of August is a special day in the same spirit as Juneteenth.
Black communities in Kentucky and Tennessee have been turning out on the 8 of August for over 150 years, marking their freedom from slavery.
Historians say August 8, 1863, was the day future U.S. President Andrew Johnson freed his own slaves in Tennessee. Johnson, then military governor of the state, did this because the Emancipation Proclamation earlier that year didn’t include Tennessee, which was then under Union control. And Kentucky wasn’t included because it was a neutral border state in the Civil War. One of those slaves, Samuel Johnson, organized the first 8th of August event in Greenville eight years later.