With picturesque summer weather, Evanston community members recognized Juneteenth during the city’s seventh annual celebration, featuring live music and food at Arrington Lagoon in Dawes Park on Friday afternoon.
The celebration, spotlighting local businesses and cultural performances following Opal’s Walk for Freedom that morning, was founded and organized by Evanston resident Kemone Hendricks. She said the event took about a year to plan, so as soon as one ends, she begins coordinating for the next year.
Red, white, and blue tents spread along the lakefront housed community organizations and vendors selling items from books to clothing to floral arrangements. As music played loudly throughout the park, attendees milled around the area, with some sitting on lawn chairs and blankets in the grass.
Before starting Evanston’s Juneteenth parade and celebration, Hendricks said she was unfamiliar with the holiday.
“I first learned about it in 2019, and it just hit my heart in a way that I could never forget about it,” she said.
Hendricks said while she learned about the Emancipation Proclamation in school, Juneteenth is not typically featured in history books. Mary Toussaint, the owner of Minouchic Boutique — which sold African and vintage clothing, accessories and beauty products at the celebration — said she similarly knew nothing about Juneteenth at first.
Toussaint said event organizers reached out to her about hosting a table at the event a few years ago. Although she didn’t know about the holiday’s meaning initially, she was interested in learning more and becoming involved. She has participated in the Juneteenth Celebration every year since.
As someone living in a city that Hendricks said prides itself on promoting diversity and equity, she explained uplifting Juneteenth in a “big way” was important to her.
Over the years, the celebration has grown in participants and sponsors, prioritizing Black-owned businesses. Hendricks said the city began issuing a proclamation to commemorate the holiday and raising a Juneteenth flag for the first time a few years ago.
“We’re a city that is proudly committed to racial equity,” Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss told The Daily on Friday. “We’re the first city in the country to do municipal reparations. We don’t get everything right. In fact, part of reparations’ whole purpose is saying we’ve gotten things really wrong, but we are committed to doing the work.”
For members of the League of Women Voters of Evanston, the Juneteenth Celebration was a way to thank local Black leaders for their service.
Tucker Wildes, who serves in the league, said the group has taken part in the Juneteenth Celebration for many years, but this time, its members wanted to do something different.
The organization put together a large wooden board including the photos and titles of 27 Black women leaders in the city to honor their achievements, featuring business owners, public servants, local organization leaders and school board members.
“We just really wanted to say thank you,” Wildes said. “That’s really what it’s about: saying thank you to these amazing women.”
Two women on the board, Kimberly Holmes-Ross and Eleanor Wicks, sat nearby at the event, chatting and laughing with other community members in the afternoon sun.
Holmes-Ross is the executive director of Evanston Cradle to Career, an organization dedicated to ensuring equitable opportunities for Evanston youth. Wicks is a member of the Evanston-North Shore Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and a member of the League of Women Voters’ social action committee. Hendricks was also featured on the board.
“(I’m) very honored to be a part of this mural and with all these women who are doing such amazing things,” Holmes-Ross said.
She said as a community member who has attended the Juneteenth Celebration for many years in the past, it felt humbling to be honored.
In a different area of the park, small children had their faces painted under a tent as families treated themselves at the C&W Market and Ice Cream Parlor’s ice cream truck. A gentle breeze carried smoke and the scent of barbecued meat from Hecky’s Barbecue, another vendor at the event, across the park.
Communications and Outreach Coordinator of Evanston Juneteenth Marketing Julia Ferguson said she wanted to become involved after attending the event four years ago. She said she saw how “wonderful” the Juneteenth Celebration was and knew she wanted to help Hendricks plan the gathering.
She emphasized the amount of effort Hendricks puts into the event each year.
“This is like her baby,” Ferguson said.
For Hendricks, the day is all about the “energy of Juneteenth that people feel when they’re here.” She added the fact that the celebration continues to grow each year proves the Evanston community enjoys it.
“Juneteenth really is a holiday that freed the people, and (it is about) how important it is to them and how they appreciate that it’s here and what we’ve done,” she said.
Emma Richman contributed reporting.
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