On a day to celebrate slavery’s official end in the United States, performer Kamille Wilson fittingly invoked the memory of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The teen Wilson opened the entertainment segment of a combined Juneteenth/Ethnic Expo cultural gathering on Columbus’ Fourth Street Saturday by performing an interpretive dance to singer Cynthia Erivo’s song “Stand Up” from the film, “Harriet.”
“It’s just great to be a part of this,” Wilson said, adding that she was taught since early childhood about the day’s significance.
Juneteenth, also known to some as Liberation Day, marks the day in 1865 when Texas officials freed America’s last slaves. Ethnic Expo is the cosmopolitan city’s celebration of its broad ethnic and cultural diversity.
This was the first of four downtown, outdoor Columbus cultural events through early October in the new Expo series. The Columbus Area Visitors Center worked in conjunction with the Columbus/Bartholomew County Area Chapter of the NAACP for Juneteenth.
The event included everything from soul food to live music to informational booths.
Despite heavy rain overnight and Saturday morning, skies cleared by early afternoon when the celebration began amid temperatures in the high 70s. That was a relief to organizers, who saw heavy rain wash out much of its 2019 event.
Organizers estimated that more than 400 people had passed through the event or were still there two hours into the gathering. They figured 600 plus attended overall.
“I think that people finally are embracing this (again),” said Olisa Humes, local NAACP former president and current vice president.
She was she was excited that President Joe Biden on Thursday made Juneteenth a national holiday.
“But I don’t want us to lose focus,” Humes said. “We still have important issues to address. We still have to worry about voting rights. We still have concerns about the police (nationally).”
Some attendees said the strong attendance was due to linking the event with Expo’s high visibility and popularity. Others said an increased awareness of national and international injustice toward Black people helped bring a fairly mixed racial population to the gathering.
And people such as Pat Corbin felt that Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday bolstered its standing among local residents.
“Actually, I also think that many people are simply sick of being divided,” Corbin said.
On Saturday, Corbin wore a T-shirt reading “White silence equals white consent.” Some others wore Black Lives Matter T-shirts. All around her along Fourth Street were small signs with a big message: “Hate has no home here.”
In fact, in a crowd with Blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians and others, unity seemed the order of the day — a day for liberation.
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- Aug 28 — Chinese Expo, in partnership with Columbus Chinese Association.
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For more photos, see therepublic.com.
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