ROANOKE (WSLS10) People in the New River Valley are celebrating their history.
The community came together for the annual Juneteenth celebration in Christiansburg Saturday.
Organizations including the Montgomery County Sheriff's office attended the event.
Organizers said they want to make sure younger generations are remembering the abolition of slavery.
"We want people to always remember that history, and to understand that a lot times there have been struggles that we are not aware of so we want to our youth and other adults about the history and why we celebrate it," Deborah Travis, the Secretary of the Montgomery Floyd Radford NAACP said.
Local lawmakers such as Christansburg's mayor, Michael Barber, were also in attendance.