Organizations from throughout the City of Peoria gathered Thursday at Freedom and Remembrance Memorial Park to announce a slate of Juneteenth celebrations.
The park memorializes the hundreds still interred at a forgotten Peoria cemetery. Notably, it’s home to the burial sites of Nance Legins-Costley, the first slave legally freed by her lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, and a relative of hers who was a Union soldier present for the first Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas.
Both Legins-Costley and her historically significant relative were invoked multiple times as community leaders shared details on the events for the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
“When we talk about Juneteenth, we’re not just talking about something that happened far away,” said Peoria Mayor Rita Ali. “We’re talking about our neighbors, our soil and our story.”
The news conference was hosted by the Peoria Park District, in collaboration with the City of Peoria, Peoria’s Miss Juneteenth Pageant, the NAACP Peoria Branch, the YANI Collective, Southside Community Center and the Heritage Ensemble.
NAACP Peoria Branch President Marvin Hightower announced the second annual Ernestine Jackson Freedom Day Parade is stepping off at noon Saturday, June 14. Hightower said the parade celebrates Jackson, the City of Peoria’s first equal opportunity employment officer, for her extensive work.
“She made a lot of things happen here in the city. A lot of people had their careers and have retired because of her efforts,” said Hightower. “She stopped buildings from being built because she wanted to make sure that our community had access to every opportunity. So it was apropos that we name this in her honor.”
Hightower said the parade has experienced significant growth this year; he expects 70 or more individual “units” in the parade, compared with about 50 last year.
Festivals and a lot more
There’s a wealth of festivals coming up for Juneteenth this year. The Southside Community Center is celebrating almost five years of Freedom Fest that will be Saturday, June 21 at Trewyn Park.
“This is all of our histories,” said the center’s director and founder, Irene Lewis-Wimbley. “And at the end of the embarrassment of slavery, we want this to be the chance for the church, the church of the South Side specifically, to roll call and call the community together in unity, to celebrate faith, family and freedom.”
The festival features food, activities, faith-based music performances and a bake-off, all with free admission from noon to 7 p.m.
The YANI Collective’s Juneteenth Fest, including a health and wellness fair, also returns to the George Washington Carver Center and John H. Gwynn Jr. Park on Saturday, June 14.
This year, organizers are highlighting that Heartland Health Services will be providing back-to-school physicals for area families at the event, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“If you have kids that are in Peoria Public Schools, even though it’s June, even though school just got out, they go back next month, it’s about that time already,” said organizer De’Marcus Hamilton.
The Juneteenth Fest also features live music, a Peoria alumni basketball game, a high-end fashion show and a new program in line with this year’s theme of “Peoria Black Wall Street” called “YANI Bucks.”
Hamilton explained that each YANI Buck represents 20 dollars the organization already has invested in more than 50 Black-owned businesses around the community. He said fake bills will be distributed at Juneteenth Fest and can be spent like cash at those businesses.
“Hopefully, we make returning customers, because if anybody knows anything about business, owning your own business is one of the hardest things to do in America,” Hamilton said. “And we want to make sure that we’re supporting our community, supporting our businesses and providing that economic empowerment and development through these YANI bucks.”
You can hear more about Juneteenth Fest on WCBU’s Out and About.
The last Juneteenth festival announced at the event is a new endeavor from the Peoria Park District called Jubilee Day from 1-9 p.m. Wednesday, June 19 at Glen Oak Park.
The new event features a car show, live music, a fashion show, a performance from a visual artist and a Juneteenth-themed drone show in the sky above Glen Oak to cap off the night.
Park District supervisor of community connections Chanel Hargrave-Murray said the event celebrates the holiday and underlines the significance of Glen Oak.
“Glen Oak Park isn’t just a beautiful backdrop. It stands as one of Peoria’s oldest and most cherished community gathering places,” she said. “It’s a place where generations of family have come together to celebrate, reflect and build community.”
However, the Juneteenth celebrations don’t stop at festivals and a parade.
The third Miss Juneteenth Pageant is at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 7, at the George Washington Carver Center. Founder Brett Brooks said the event is expanding this year with additional titles, including Mr. Juneteenth and Little Miss Juneteenth.
Besides the title, Brooks said the winner of the pageant receives scholarship support.
“This pageant is a gift, a personal gift from me to the community, because it’s needed here,” said Brooks. “The goal is to one day give away a $50,000 scholarship … I do want this to be a scholarship pageant to fully fund the people to go to college, and we’re working our way up to that.”
Admission to the pageant is free, though Brooks asks attendees to RSVP for space considerations.
Finally, the Juneteenth celebrations also include a musical performance from the Heritage Ensemble, performing at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 15 at the Illinois Central College Performing Arts Center at the East Peoria campus.
