Juneteenth Sunrise Service
DUE TO THE FORECASTED INCLEMENT WEATHER, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE WILLIAMSBURG LODGE HOTEL.
To commemorate the triumphant spirit of the African American journey, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation will host its third annual Juneteenth Sunrise Service on Sunday, June 15, at 6 a.m. in the Virginia Room at the Williamsburg Lodge Hotel.
The Juneteenth Sunrise Service is inspired by “Watch Night” - also referred to as “Freedom’s Eve” - a tradition in Black churches across the United States born out of the enslaved community’s “waiting for the hour” on the night of December 31, 1862. With the coming dawn, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863.
The first documented Sunrise Service was conducted for Easter in 1732 by the Moravian community in Herrnhut, Germany. It appears that Moravians who came to the American colonies spread the tradition, which was taken up by several denominations, including Black and white churches. Southern Black churches sometimes combined the Easter Sunrise Service with an all-night vigil, such as the Easter Rock, which still survives in Louisiana. Sunrise Services in Black churches also celebrated other significant events, like the fall of Wilmington, North Carolina, to Union forces in February 1865.
Special keynote address by Dr. Daniel Black, award-winning novelist, professor, and public speaker.
Daniel Black, Ph.D.
Author, Professor, Consultant, Mentor
Dr. Daniel Black is a 30-year professor of African American Studies at Clark Atlanta University. He is also an award-winning novelist, mentor, and public speaker. His published works include They Tell Me of Home, The Sacred Place, Perfect Peace, Twelve Gates to the City, The Coming, Listen to the Lambs, Don’t Cry for Me, Black on Black, and Isaac’s Song. In 2014, he won the Distinguished Writer’s Award from the Mid-Atlantic Writers Association. The Go On Girl! National Book Club named him “Author of the Year” in 2011 for his best-selling novel Perfect Peace. Perfect Peace was also chosen as the 2014 “If All Arkansas Read the Same Book” selection by the Arkansas Center for the Book at the Arkansas State Library. The novel has been reprinted more than ten times and is heralded as an American literary classic. Dr. Black has been nominated (three times) for the Townsend Literary Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award, the Ferro-Grumbley Literary Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Georgia Author of the Year Prize, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
In 2015, Dr. Black’s The Coming was published to broad critical acclaim. The novel is a first-hand account of the trauma and triumph of Africans aboard a slave ship in the 16th century. Reviewers call this work “brilliant”, “poetic”, and “a literary homage to the lives of those Africans tossed into the sea.” National Book Award winner Charles Johnson says, “The Coming is powerful and brilliant.” He goes on to state, “This is a work to be proud of!” In 2016, Dr. Black’s long-awaited novel Listen to the Lambs was released. This novel explores the lives and agency of unhoused people who find each other on the street and create lives of meaning without material substance.
Dr. Black’s work has been justly celebrated. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker says about Perfect Peace: “t is a spellbinding novel that kept me reading late into several nights. A young boy raised as a girl until ‘she’ was eight years old…. and then? Forced to be a ‘boy.’ It is a gift to have so much passion, so much love, so much beautiful writing so flawlessly faithful to the language of ancestors who grappled as best they could with more than they could ever understand. This novel will one day be a film of much benefit to us, if done well. The visuals of it will help us see what we are so often blind to: the great fluidity inherent in all things, including ‘race’ and sexuality. Thank you, Daniel Black.”
Dr. Black’s newest novel, Don’t Cry For Me, was released by HarperCollins on February 1, 2022. About this novel, National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward says, “Don’t Cry for Me is a perfect song: the epistolary dirge of a man singing to his son as he faces death by cancer. At turns intense and funny, tender and brutally honest, Jacob’s letter to his son, Isaac, is revelatory. It’s a beautiful book. Read it.” Black’s newest work is his first essay collection titled BLACK ON BLACK, which was released on January 30, 2023. In response to this work, renowned Baldwin scholar Dr. Eddie Glaude says, “Black on Black is a tour de force. Brilliant. Passionate. Deeply caring. One reads these essays and feels immediately enveloped in Daniel Black’s love—even when he challenges you or when you might disagree. I really needed to read this book in these trying times.” Black also won the 2024 “Georgia Author of the Year Award” for Black on Black.
Dr. Black also works as a diversity consultant, having spoken at top-tier companies in America such as Google, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, AT&T, and Global Payments. He assists corporations with creating work environments in which all employees, of every level and difference, feel supported and valued.
A native of Kansas City, Kansas, Black spent his formative years in rural Blackwell, Arkansas. He graduated from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), where he earned the prestigious Oxford Modern British Studies fellowship, and studied abroad at Oxford University. He was then awarded a full fellowship to Temple University, where he studied with Black Arts Movement poet laureate Sonia Sanchez and, in 1992, earned a Ph.D. in African American Studies. Dr. Black has spent the majority of his 30 academic years as a professor of African American Studies at his beloved alma mater, Clark Atlanta University.
Dr. Black lives in Atlanta and is the founder of the Ndugu-Nzinga Rites of Passage Nation, an initiation society for people of African descent who seek to love themselves and build a world of character for their people.
In January of 2025, Dr. Black’s eighth novel, a literary sequel to Don’t Cry for Me, titled Isaac’s Song, will drop. His ninth, Simon Says, is finished and forthcoming. He is currently working on part II of The Coming, titled The Second Coming, and a black scripture titled The Good Book.
