2026 JUNETEENTH
Cultural • Celebration • Program
1:00p to 3:00p
Friday, June 19th, 2026
Saratoga Springs, NY
2026 JUNETEENTH Contributors
NELL STOKES
NELL STOKES is a native of Montgomery Alabama. She came to the Capital District in 1963. Her experiences with Jim Crow laws in the south have been the topic of many talks she has given to schools and community organizations. Her passion for voting rights led to active involvement in the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, and service as an Albany County Election Inspector. Nell is both an activist and a volunteer. She created the Famous Black American Essay Contest for students, tutored with the Wizards Wardrobe and volunteered with the Giffen Elementary School’s 15 Love Book Club. The Albany Institute of History and Art highlighted “Nell Stokes: Stories Education Advocate” December 17, 1923 – December 23, 2024. An oral interview with Nell is on the Institutes website www.albanyinstitute.org. She is also featured in a documentary “Journey to Freedom” Honoring Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. It can be accessed at siena.edu/journeytofreedom. Most recently she performed a one-woman show, “Songs, Poetry & Stories” at the Woman’s Club of Albany and the Alice Moore Black Cultural Center. Nell is known to give unselfishly of her time, talent and treasure. She says her faith sustains her as God uses her gifts to His glory.
DEACON DEBORA BROWN
DEACON DEBORA BROWN of Albany’s Macedonia Church is also the President of Albany’s NAACP chapter.
DR. JOSEPH BRUCHAC
JoeBruchac earned his B.A. from Cornell University, his Master's from Syracuse, and his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute. A proud citizen of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation (Band #1101), Joe's Abenaki(literally, dawn land) ancestry has inspired him to study deeply and write about important aspects of Indigenous traditions, peoples, and experiences in the Americas.
Some of his notable works include Keepers of the Earth and Code Talker selected by TIME as among The 100 Best YA Books of All Time.
Joe is the founder of the Greenfield Review which has published over 150 multicultural books and anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, giving voice to the otherwise voiceless and marginalized. Appointed as the 2023-2024 Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs, NY, he just finished he second term for 2025 in this esteemed position. In 1996, he was awarded the Knickerbocker Award for Juvenile Literature, and is the winner of numerous other awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship. He later received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.
Joe worked for three years of volunteer teaching in West Africa from 1966-1969 which led to his becoming friends with some of the best known African writers of the 20th century.