Juneteenth Family Festival kicks off on South Side

[00:00:01]Today is Juneteenth, the federal holiday marking the end of slavery in the US 2 years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to commemorate the date. There are events and celebrations taking place across the Chicago area today and this weekend and that includes the Juneteenth Family Festival of Beverly Morgan Park now in its seventh year. Organizers say the goal is to honor African-American culture and heritage and unite a diverse community. The festival is tomorrow from noon to 7:00 on Longwood between 110th and 111th streets and joining us now is co-founder Shanya Gray. Welcome back to our show.

[00:00:46]>> Thank you, Dana. Thank you for having me and happy Juneteenth.

[00:00:49]>> Yeah, happy Juneteenth to you as well. I know you started the festival in 2019, right? The year before everything shut down. It was small then, a few hundred people, but it's really grown since then. Tell me about that.

[00:01:00]>> Yeah, so we started, you know, the vision was to have a community event that honored African-American heritage and culture, especially in the Beverly Morgan Park neighborhood, which is a very diverse community.

[00:01:12]Um, but one that hasn't always celebrated that diversity. And so we held a smaller festival in the Longwoods. It was our pilot festival. We just wanted to um, celebrate. And so we had 300 people come out, which was even more than we expected. And since then, >> [music] >> um, in our seventh year now, the festival has grown to a couple thousand people who come every year to celebrate.

[00:01:33]>> That's got to be a great feeling for you being that you started this.

[00:01:37]>> Oh, absolutely. It has gone beyond my wildest dreams. I never anticipated that when I had this idea back in 2019 that it would have grown to something so beautiful and so big.

[00:01:49]>> Do you think it is actually um, sparking and helping facilitate uh, inclusion and community and working together?

[00:01:59]>> Yes, so last year we actually conducted we we conducted an evaluation and we saw that most of the people who were evaluated, 95% of them believed it fostered community connection and people came for the community, the environment and to really bring together everyone who was there and to celebrate.

[00:02:18]>> All right, so if people want to head out this year tomorrow, what what will they see? What can they do? What do you got on tap?

[00:02:23]>> So, we start the festival at 12. We have some of our usual where we will have um our foot workers, our Chicago foot workers. We can't have it without them.

[00:02:33]The Takeover Gang. We're going to have a band called Shea Butter Band that's going to perform. South Shore Drill Drill Team. We love to feature the youth of Chicago. You know, we often hear such negative pieces and so we like to prefer um provide diversity of our youth and to really celebrate our youth. We're going to have a live artist so who's going to be painting at the festival. Um we're going to have a STEM lab for youth. All youth activities, basketball hoops in the middle of the street. Um and so there's going to be that and so much more. Our vendors, our health and wellness component. We're going to have so much out there for everybody.

[00:03:09]>> And you do this all with volunteers?

[00:03:11]>> Yes, we're none of us are paid. I have a lovely team of um women who live in our community who love to do this. This is a labor of love we call it. So, we're all volunteers. None of us are paid to do this.

[00:03:26]>> Well, I'm sure it's going to be a rousing success. The weather looks great as well. Shandagray, thank so much for being here to talk about it and um I I hope it yeah, I hope it's just wonderful.

[00:03:36]>> Thank you, Dana.

[00:03:37]>> You're welcome. Again, the Juneteenth Family Festival is tomorrow from noon to 7:00 at 110th and Longwood in the Beverly Morgan Park neighborhoods and you might want to check it out. All right, we have a list of Juneteenth events happening throughout Chicago and the suburbs on our website cbschicago.com. If you're interested, check that out, too.