Juneteenth
Community joins in annual celebration at farmers market
Music played, children tossed around a football, and the smell of barbecue filled the air at the Hot Springs Farmers and Artisans Market pavilion Saturday evening for the community’s annual Juneteenth National Independence Day Celebration.
City officials and members of the Black community joined in the fun and recounted the history of Juneteenth, which was officially recognized as a federal holiday two years ago.
“I think we have a great community here, and I think this right here is an indicator that we can all come together and celebrate today and have a good time,” Hot Springs Police Chief Billy Hrvatin said.
There were prayers for unity, a dance presentation by a youth group and a history recap of the struggle for Black independence and how the holiday came to be recognized.
Carolyn Hughes sang the first verse of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which, according to NAACP.org, is often referred to as “The Black National Anthem.” It was a hymn written as a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900. The song “was prominently used as a rallying cry during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s,” the website said.
Following Hughes’ performance was a prayer by the Rev. Gregory Guinn of Visitors’ Chapel AME, a performance by the Martin Luther King Dance Team and a lesson on the history of the day by Janice Washington, parent, family and community engagement coordinator for the Head Start program.
“Our African American ancestors have taken negative words and turned them into positive ones,” said Washington. “We have turned dependence into independence, imprisonment into free, bondage into loose, captivity into freedom and enslaved into liberated.”
She explained how Juneteenth has evolved over the years and how the real momentum behind the event becoming a federal holiday came to fruition two years ago. Known as the grandmother of Juneteenth, 96-year-old Opal Lee — a teacher from Texas where the last holdout of slavery is generally agreed to be — led a walking campaign to see the holiday recognized. She walked 2 and a half miles at a time, gaining assistance from thousands around the nation.
The walk represented the two and a half years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the actual emancipation of the slaves in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865. Her effort was rewarded on June 17, 2021, when President Joe Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth the 11th federal holiday.
“Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on ’til victory is won,” ends the first verse of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Difference Makers of Hot Springs, in conjunction with the Martin Luther King Jr. Hot Springs Committee, organized Saturday’s celebration, which was started over 30 years ago by Bearbra Coleman Sr., his son, Diablo Coleman, said last week. Coleman took over the celebration following his father’s death six years ago.