It was 1994 when a handful of organizers created the Delaware Juneteenth Association, not only celebrating Black history but also armed with a mission statement to develop programs to address community issues.
Thirty years later, the organization continues to grow and hosted its largest annual event on Saturday: the Juneteenth Freedom Parade and Festival, which drew about 3,000 people to downtown Wilmington and the Riverfront.
“We started with a blink of an eye and now we are the keepers of the flame,” said Sylvia Lewis-Harris, one of six co-founders, led by lead founder Bernie Wilkins, as she looked out at the crowd from under a tent. .
The parade doubles in size
Saturday’s parade featured 60 parades marching down King Street from Rodney Square to the Riverfront, doubling last year’s effort to celebrate the holiday, which falls on Wednesday. The parade ended at Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park with a six-hour festival celebration featuring children’s attractions and music by R&B singer Christopher Williams (“I’m Dreamin'”) and The Odyssey Band.
Lines stretched along the sidewalk for the most popular food vendors, drawn by the smells of whiting and catfish sandwiches from Vern’s Fish Fry and Cajun crab and fried shrimp mac and cheese from Krys’ Soul Kreations.
The 2.4-acre Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park is named for Wilmington figures and Underground Railroad abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Thomas Garrett, who is believed to have helped nearly 3,000 enslaved people reach freedom.
“Having it here really makes it poignant,” Lewis-Harris said of the park, which began hosting the Juneteenth festival several years ago after it moved from Christina Park a few blocks away.
Juneteenth is now a holiday in the state of Delaware
Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Liberation Day, is celebrated on June 19 to commemorate the day in 1865 when the Emancipation Proclamation was read in Galveston, Texas, announcing that all slaves of the state were free.
It came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation that had formally freed slaves in the rebellious states. Many slave owners did not comply, and law enforcement was slow to reach Texas.
In 2020, the killing of George Floyd, who was Black, at the hands of white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, sparked widespread protests across the country and in Delaware.
Less than a month after Floyd’s murder, Governor John Carney announced that all state offices would close in observance of Juneteenth. In 2022, it became a permanent state holiday.
A history lesson in freedom.
It was the first time Charles Hayward, a retired former Delaware state employee, had attended the event.
Hayward, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest historically African-American intercollegiate fraternity, attended with his wife, Saundra, who was celebrating her birthday on a park bench with a cup of ice cream.
“I grew up here and I wanted to come and show support, knowing the background of the park. There’s a lot of history here,” said Hayward, who now lives in Brandywine Hundred.
Freshman association president Styna Marisa LeCompte says Juneteenth and the celebrations around it are especially important to the younger generation.
“Today, our young people are sometimes not taught history, much less black history,” he said. “They need to know who they’re relying on.”
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Delaware’s Juneteenth Celebration and Juneteenth Parade Still Coming
In addition to the weekend parade and festival, the association will host a Juneteenth celebration service at Cornerstone Fellowship Baptist Church (20 W. Lea Blvd., Wilmington) at noon Wednesday.
The Rev. Dr. Jesse Wendell Mapson Jr., senior pastor of Monumental Baptist Church in Philadelphia, will be the guest preacher with music by the Rev. Justin Powell and an appearance by Miss Juneteenth Delaware Erin Hubbard Witcher.
This year’s Juneteenth events will end on June 29 at 5 p.m. with the 27th annual Delaware Juneteenth Pageant at The Baby Grand (818 N. Market St., Wilmington). Tickets are $15 for adults and $7.50 for ages 12 and under at thegrandwilmington.com.
Do you have an idea for a story? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).
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