Thousands gathered Saturday at the You Matter 2 organization’s first Juneteenth Festival in a parking lot at Homewood-Flossmoor High School following a big week for the holiday.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation Wednesday to make Juneteenth a state holiday.
“It brings me exceptional pride to sign into law the declaration of Juneteenth … making us one of the few states in the nation to give it the full status it deserves,” he said in a speech in Springfield.
President Joe Biden took ink to paper Friday to sign legislation making Juneteenth a national holiday.
“This is a day of profound — in my view — profound weight and profound power,” he said in a speech in Washington. “A day we remember the moral stain the terrible toll that slavery took in the country and continues to take – what I’ve long called ‘America’s original sin.'”
The official designations pleased Destiny Watson, a 22-year-old who began organizing the event in Flossmoor before the state and federal action.
“I’m really happy about it and this is kind of the first step,” Watson said. “But we definitely have a long way to go. Recognizing it as a federal holiday is really important. I just hope that people who get the day off realize what this day actually means and not just take it for day off.”
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when slaves in Galveston, Texas, were informed they were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation that President Abraham Lincoln signed two years prior.
“I think this is a good way to celebrate and teach our children and those who don’t knows about what Juneteenth means,” said Flossmoor’s Kimberly Mitchell, who was at the event with her husband, Frederic, and daughter Kathleen.
“I look forward to the government also putting into place opportunities for teachers to teach this in class. I hope this is not just symbolic, I hope it’s a steppingstone in the direction of recognizing the struggles that Black Americans have gone through.”
The festival featured food, music and about 75 vendors including a booth partially staffed by 12-year-old Robyn Johnson of Chicago Heights, who was selling homemade bracelets.
She is also a rapper who goes under the name Lil Bit Saucy and was recently selected by Lego as a kid creative director.
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She has been aware of Juneteenth’s meaning for two years.
“I love it, I’ve been celebrating,” she said. “It’s been a great week.”
Watson said she didn’t celebrate Juneteenth until last year, when there was an abundance of racial strife. The idea for the festival was also partially motivated by the death of her father, Lawrence, when she was 5 in what she called an incident of police brutality.
There was a Say Their Names Memorial wall with 275 names and photos of Blacks who lost their lives to racial injustice and a photo of Lawrence was on the wall.
Watson was amazed at the size and scope of this first festival.
“We had 3,000 people register and it was totally unexpected,” she said. “We hoped for that, but I didn’t think we were actually going to hit that.
“With the pandemic, we didn’t know what was going to happen — if it was going to be virtual or in person or if we were going to do it in time slots. It worked out perfectly. The timing was perfect with Illinois moving into phase five.”
Frederic Mitchell said he was not surprised.
“If you engage people and focus on the goal of bringing everyone together, people will come out,” he said. “We celebrate all different kinds of cultures and what it means to be an American and this is a part of that story, too.”
Watson’s You Matter 2 is billed as a youth group “focused on building a better world.” It was founded in 2014 by Watson, who hopes to someday build a teen center in the Homewood-Flossmoor area.
She said there was a large team of people who helped pull the fest together including help from the village. Flossmoor Mayor Michelle Nelson and state Sen. Patrick Joyce gave brief speeches to kick off the festivities.
Watson said she hopes this fest will continue for years.
“It gives me great joy that I was able to do this for my community,” she said. “Seeing all of this support is mind-blowing.”
Jeff Vorva is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.