Jacqueline Bosby
The Joynt Production Network (JPN) will celebrate Juneteenth with a Black Youth Heritage Expo from noon to 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 19, at Oak Tree Plaza in Lexington.
The expo will feature 15-20 exhibits created by Black students across Georgia.
“It’s a leadership program for high school students,” JPN founder Jacqueline Bosby said. “We allow them to do research on their heritage and then they present it to the community.”
This will be the first JPN Black Youth Heritage Expo in Oglethorpe County.
Bosby, who is running against incumbent Andy Saxon for the District 2 commission seat this year, created the expo with her husband Michael “Silk” Bosby in 1994. It was hosted at Malcolm X College in Chicago, where the two lived.
“We had created all the exhibits and collected artifacts for over three years,” she said. “It just seemed like it wasn’t doing enough for me, so I started incorporating the schools in it, to bring them out for field trips. Then it just still seemed like something was missing, so we started having the kids create the exhibits.”
The expo began traveling in 1999, and in 2000, Bosby moved to Georgia. Cedar Shoals High School hosted the first Black Youth Heritage Expo in the Athens area in 2002.
JPN has hosted a Black Youth Heritage Expo on Juneteenth every year since 2015, except last year.
Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S., became a federal holiday in 2021.
“In the beginning, we wanted to highlight Black history during Black History Month,” Bosby said. “Twenty years ago, you couldn’t do a Black history event unless it was done in February. Now … we can teach Black history 365 days a year.”