Madison’s 29th annual Juneteenth Day Celebration, a historical celebration of African-American emancipation, took place on a very hot and humid Saturday, June 16 at Penn Park.
“With Juneteenth, we try to help and instill in the next generation the importance of remembering where they come from and the resilience of black people in America,” Jacquelyn Hunt, Juneteenth executive planning committee member, tells Madison365. “It’s really important that young people know what happened in the past in order to get them to the freedoms and the liberties that they enjoy today so that they don’t take those things for granted.”
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, a day when African-American slaves in Texas were told by Union forces that they were free. They were the final group of slaves to realize their freedom. Deep in the Confederacy, they were unaware of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation almost two years earlier. A celebration of the day has been held annually in Texas ever since, which eventually spread to other states.
The event was once again organized by Kujichagulia Madison Center for Self Determination, a non-profit that promotes African-American cultural and educational events here in Madison that Mona Winston and Annie Weatherby Flowers founded in 2006. Weatherby Flowers has been organizing annual Madison’s Juneteenth event from the very beginning.
“I always long for those days back in our heyday when we had 10,000 or 8,000 people attend this event,” Weatherby Flowers tells Madison365. “But it was still a well-attended event and people really enjoyed themselves. We tried to make sure that young people were showcased and the kids had the opportunity to get a lot of different kinds of information and education and at the same time have fun.”
For the first time in Madison, Juneteenth was celebrated for a whole week this year with events focused on black resilience going on every night.
“We had programming the six days before the event where we partnered with the African American Council of Churches, United Way, Urban League, Justified Anger, Madison College, and the Black Greeks,” Weatherby-Flowers says. “It was a wonderful opportunity to talk about black resilience and how we can start a collective effort on how we can start teaching our young folks the resilience that many of us were taught by older folks.”
Juneteenth 2018 kicked off, as it does every year, with the Juneteenth Parade and then it was a very hot and active day of great food, great music, heritage exhibitions, church tents, entertainment, children’s areas, local vendors and much more.
“Juneteenth was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work. It was a great turnout,” Hunt says. “We have to figure out a way to get this younger generation – this next generation right behind me – more engaged and more involved, but for the most part it was a great celebration and everybody had a good time.”
This was the first Juneteenth at the newly renovated Penn Park on Madison’s south side. “You know my heart is always at Penn Park for this event,” Hunt says. “I think that Juneteenth being in the heart of Penn Park – where it all began – is awesome. I love having it where its roots are at – right there on the south side.”
The feeling of Juneteenth in Madison has changed from the past thanks to social media, Hunt says. That’s both good and bad.
“In the past, Juneteenth was a place for people to come out and see people that they haven’t seen probably since the last Juneteenth. It was a meeting place. Families came to celebrate and see people they haven’t seen in a long time … you connected and re-connected,” Hunt says. “Now, social media has connected us in a way that is all the time so we don’t have to wait for a special event like Juneteenth to re-connect us. That’s both a blessing and a curse, from my perspective.”
Facebook keeps us connected, but you can’t do double-dutch online, right?
“No, you can’t! We had adults and kids playing together. We did the limbo,” Hunt says. “I’m a people person. I want to interact, I want to hug you. I want the face-to-face contact. The breaking of bread, the Soul Train line. I want all of that. I don’t want that ever to die.
“We played jacks, musical chairs, dominoes … all those old-school games that used to keep us engaged for hours and hours and hours when I was a youth,” she adds. “It’s important that we share it with the next generation.”
It was a family-like atmosphere.
“Juneteenth in Madison is all about family. It’s all about kinship. It’s all about community,” says Weatherby Flowers. “We really need the conversation this year around resilience … for the sake of our young people especially.”
