PITTSBORO — Under the sizzling sun on Saturday, June 17, almost 3,000 festivalgoers looked through Black-owned vendors’ booths, admiring artwork, spices, jewelry and even honey to buy.
Others sat and enjoyed Liquid Pleasure’s music covers booming across the Chatham County Fairgrounds, while others danced along to the sounds of “Rock with You” originally sung by Michael Jackson.
The 6th Annual Juneteenth Black Arts Festival 2023 — this year’s theme “Recognizing Our Roots, Our Family, & Our Black Culture” — organized by Community Organizing for Racial Equity (CORE) took place between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. two days before June 19.
“This is a community healing moment right here,” Karinda Roebuck, executive director of CORE, said about the event.
Not only does the festival recognize the last freed people in the United States, but it also aims to build community, Roebuck said.
Juneteenth, which is recognized on June 19, is the commemoration of the liberation of the last enslaved people in the United States in 1865 in Galveston, Texas, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was put in place by Abraham Lincoln in 1983.
President Joe Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, and Gov. Roy Cooper officially proclaimed June 19 as Juneteenth during an N.C. Museum of History Juneteenth event, according to a press release from the Governor’s press office.
“It [the festival] is building community around our collective liberation and our collective joy,” Roebuck said. “We are here together at this joyful occasion, to celebrate — to celebrate the last enslaved Africans being freed. This is about all Americans now are able to be free.”
In addition, this event also aims to educate the community about Juneteenth through a lecture series with speakers Dr. Ronda Taylor Bullock, Superintendent of Chatham County Schools Dr. Anthony Jackson and Preston Cook, a play and educational booths.
All vendors and performers — like Silky Smooth Drumline, Zeta Phi Beta and Dominique Dlyric McDaniels — were Black-owned, apart from the non-profit organizations, also in attendance with booths.
Over the past six years, CORE’s Juneteenth Festival has grown from being held at the Chatham Community Library and the Chatham County Agriculture & Conference Center needing full Chatham County Fairgrounds space, Roebuck said.
Adding to the significance of this event, the grounds on which the festival took place “was founded and operated by African Americans,” according to Chatham County Agricultural & Industrial Fair Association website.
The organization has owned the grounds since 1952 and is in its 73rd year of operation.
With the festival’s growing success and attendance year after year, CORE starts planning its annual Juneteenth Festival a year in advance.
The planning is done through CORE’s Juneteenth Organization Committee, which listens to the community to decide on vendors, food and performers, Xiomara Yanique, CORE event planner said.
She is the liaison between the committee — which meets weekly and has about 12 consistent members — and the CORE executive members, she said.
“Because this is a community-led event, my job was to hear the community and really let them run with it,” she said.
Among the committee were different leads, ones who focused on performers, vendors and others: Everything was voted on — “It was a communal decision,” Yanique said.
The event also had food trucks, a bounce house and an indoor space where the lecture series, play and puppet show took place.
Roebuck said she hopes the community learns about the importance of Juneteenth and recognizes the shifting of power.
“It's one of those moments for a racial equity organization to understand those dynamics of shifting power, to understand those dynamics of: Juneteenth should be led by the African American community,” Roebuck said. “What happens here should be led by the African American community — That doesn't mean we're not welcoming others. That means that we are shifting power and taking a step back, so that their brilliance and their knowledge and their history and lived experience can shine through.”
Event Coordinator Ann Alston had more thoughts about the federal holiday: Juneteenth is like African American’s Fourth of July, she said.
“And I want them [eventgoers] to realize this is our time to celebrate,” Alston said.
For a long time Alston would hear from the community that they didn’t know Chatham County had its own Juneteenth celebration, she said. Now, she said, it’s an added benefit that the community is finally aware of the festival.
“The big lesson is that we can boogie down across racial divides, socioeconomic status all together,” Roebuck said.
With the next festival just one year away, CORE already has next year’s theme: “Freedom to Dream.”