Chapel Hill and Carrboro host fourth-annual Juneteenth celebration

On June 16, the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro held their fourth-annual joint Juneteenth celebration at the Hargraves Community Center in Chapel Hill.

Juneteenth — also referred to as Emancipation Day — is celebrated annually on June 19 to honor the emancipation of African Americans from slavery in 1865. It was declared a federal holiday in 2021.

“Juneteenth is an amazing opportunity for a community to come together and celebrate,” Chapel Hill Town Council member Paris Miller-Foushee said. “And to be able to have it here at the Hargraves Center, which has such a deep history in the African American community, makes it really, really special.”

The Hargraves Community Center is located in the heart of Chapel Hill’s largest historically Black neighborhood, Northside. During the celebration, the inside of the center was dedicated to a booth providing information on the Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill as well as a “Transcribe-A-Thon,” hosted by the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History, which allowed event-goers to transcribe oral history clips from residents of historically Black neighborhoods in the area. 

“We are striving to preserve Black history in the midst of change in our community,” George Barrett, the executive director of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, said in a speech. “And just like the young freedom fighters of Lincoln High School and folks from this neighborhood and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s who said it then and we say it now — we shall not be moved.”

Barrett said that it has become a standard in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools District for children in kindergarten through fifth grade to be taught about local Black history and, in the fall, it will become a standard course of study for middle and high schoolers as well. 

The Juneteenth event took place both inside and outside the community center, with vendors, nonprofits and food trucks lining the field. The vendors at the event were largely Black-owned businesses and artists, and the food trucks specialized in various cuisines including Creole and East African. 

Miller-Foushee said she was glad that the event was an opportunity for small businesses, entrepreneurs and food trucks to come out and to support Black-owned businesses. 

The event also had informational booths from local organizations such as the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, You Can Vote and Chapel Hill Affordable Housing. 

“It’s just a great opportunity to come out, get information, get some food, talk to a politician,” Anissa Mclendon, co-chair of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP’s education committee, said.

There were performances ranging from local jump rope team the Bouncing Bulldogs to musical performances by artists Mickey Mills, Rayah and Social Construkt. Additionally, Chapel Hill’s first poet laureate, CJ Suitt, delivered a speech about Juneteenth.

“On this Juneteenth, we celebrate not just surviving, but thriving when we were meant to do anything but,” he said in the speech. “So join me in facing the rising sun. Bask in the joy that is today — a celebration of life, our life, blackness, a concentration of all colors together.” 

Lisa Jokines, a vendor at the event, said she feels Juneteenth is important to celebrate even though it did not mark the actual end of slavery in some states, and that it is important to understand Black culture and history.

“The celebration means a lot, because you have to go back to our culture. What did our culture come from? What are we teaching our folks? What are they learning today? They need to know about their history, and how things started, and to see how it actually evolved,” she said.

@LolaOliverio

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