Residents enjoy Juneteenth celebrations
ELKHART — Janie Boyden, who recently retired as a dance and physical education teacher at Elkhart High School after 38 years, reunited with old students at the Elkhart Juneteenth celebration at Roosevelt Park.
“It was really fun seeing them,” Boyden said. “Some of them I had not seen other than Facebook and it was just good reuniting with them.”
Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates the emancipation of those who have been enslaved in the United States. The origins of the holiday go back to June 19, 1865, when the last group of enslaved people in the southern United States were informed of their freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation.
Juneteenth did not become an official federal holiday until 2021, but Americans have been celebrating the holiday for more than a century. According to Antwon Williams Sr., who organized Elkhart’s Juneteenth event, Elkhart’s celebration of the holiday goes back several years.
Part of the celebration included a dance by some of Boyden’s former students, who she had not seen in a long time. The dance included parts of a routine they did for their high school dance recital back in the 1990’s.
“I was just elated,” Boyden said. “Because they took the time to go back and watch and relearn a dance that was excellent when they were in high school.”
The Juneteenth celebration at Roosevelt Park also included an opening flag ceremony, which included the American flag, the Juneteenth flag, and the Pan-African flag.
The celebration featured a few speakers, one of which was the mayor of Elkhart.
“Let’s continue to join with each other and with everyone else,” Mayor Rod Roberson said. “We should have black, brown and white understanding the significance of this day, so that we can acknowledge the struggle and the commitment to collaborative growth together.”
In addition to dancers, other performances included David Smith and Talea Gillespie singing the Black National Anthem. Paul Bertha, a spoken word poet, also recited two poems, “White Houses” by Claude McKay and “I, Too, Sing America” by Langston Hughes. Both were published in the 1920s, an era known as “The Harlem Renaissance.”
Bertha said he chose “White Houses” because it describes the desperation of the Black person in finding belonging in America. He chose “I, Too, Sing America” because it speaks to the hope and expectation of belonging.
Bertha described a conversation he had with someone about why a holiday like Juneteenth is even needed now that Blacks are accepted into other institutions and are not excluded. He said the institutions that Black people created are valuable because they celebrate identity.
“The message that Juneteenth is trying to convey is one of ownership and belonging,” Bertha said. “Ownership of freedom in America.”
Another Juneteenth celebration in Elkhart took place at the Elkhart Public Library. The celebration included food and vendors as well. Elkhart native Nathan Napalm also performed on the rooftop stage.
