1st Annual Freedom Day Festival

The National Park Service (NPS) at Camp Nelson National Monument, in partnership with the Camp Nelson Preservation and Education Foundation, National Coalition of Black Veteran Organizations, Kentucky Center for African American Heritage, Jessamine County Public Library, Visit Jessamine, and Kentucky Historical Society invites you to the 1st Annual Freedom Day Festival from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm on Saturday, June 21, 2025.

The special event commemorates the Brigadier General Charles Young Memorial Historical Corridor—the 170-mile route from Camp Nelson National Monument in Jessamine County to Mays Lick—and concludes at the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Wilberforce, Ohio. Born to enslaved parents in 1864 in Mays Lick, Kentucky, Young became the third African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; the first African American superintendent of a national park; and the highest ranking African American U.S. Army officer at the time of his death in 1922. Young was posthumously promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the Regular Army on February 1, 2022.

The festival features live music featuring The Marshall Law Band, food, arts and crafts, children’s activities, guided talks and walks, and a keynote presentation by sculptor Ed Hamilton, creator of the Spirit of Freedom African American Civil War Monument in Washington DC. It's free and open to the public!