Juneteenth Celebration Cookout
Event to be held on June 21st 3pm-7pm at Sostre Pointer Liberation Garden located at 1412 Jefferson Ave. Buffalo, NY
Buffalo, New York, June 10th, 2026. On Sunday June 21st from 3pm to 7pm, community members will gather at the Sostre-Pointer Liberation Garden, located at 1412 Jefferson Ave. in Buffalo, New York, to celebrate Juneteenth. During our Juneteenth Celebration we will hear performances by Dallas Taylor, Sauce the Artist, Chrxs Prxce, “GOODNE$$”, Jay Aquarious, and The Galactic Griot. There is a $10 suggested donation, benefitting Colored Girls Bike Too and East Side Stewards. This celebration is open to the public.
In 1865 the Union Army made their way into Texas and declared to the enslaved African Americans that slavery had ended and that they were free. Texas was one of states that rebelled against the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, and it was not until June 19th, 1865 that the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced by the Union Army. We celebrate this day each year to honor and celebrate this history.
We will be celebrating this year at the Sostre-Pointer Liberation Garden, the site of the former Afro-Asian Bookshop, to honor and respect a piece of Black Buffalo history. The Afro-Asian Bookshop during its time served as a place of education, and liberation for the Black Buffalo community. In 1967 Martin Sostre and Geraldine Pointer were framed and arrested. Sostre was charged with illegal possession of narcotics, inciting a riot, arson, resisting arrest, and assault. Pointer was charged with selling narcotics and interfering with arrest. By Sostre’s March 1968 trial the arson and riot charges were dropped, and drug charges reduced to a single $15 bag of heroin supplied by a police informant, Arto Williams, who later recanted his testimony. Sostre and Pointer were both convicted by all-white juries. Pointer lost custody of her five children, but was reunited with them after two years of incarceration. Sostre was granted clemency in 1975 and was released from prison in 1976.
This space was and is essential to understanding the Black radical tradition of Black Buffalonians. Education has always been, and will continue to be a source of emancipation for all oppressed groups, which the bookstore sought to represent. We honor and respect this tradition by celebrating Juneteenth on this sacred land.
Local activists and supporters have petitioned for the exoneration for both Pointer and Sostre to be turned away and denied by the Erie County DA, Chautauqua County DA, and the Niagara County DA. However we will not give up, we will keep fighting for the exoneration that Sostre and Pointer so rightly deserve.
While we celebrate the emancipation of enslaved African Americans we are still waiting for the day we can celebrate Sostre and Pointer’s exonerations.
