MANSFIELD — American author, poet and Civil Rights activist Maya Angelou once said, “No one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
For Enisia Lee, that’s what Juneteenth is all about.
Lee, who spearheads the local non-profit Princess Endowment, is part of a Juneteenth committee planning a day of festivities in Mansfield on Saturday. Lee called the events are a celebration of culture, freedom and community.
The day begins with a parade at 10 a.m. The parade route starts at the intersection of Marion Avenue and Park Avenue West.
The celebration will continue at 11 a.m. in Mansfield’s Central Park. The festival will include live music, a health fair, wine tastings, a line dancing workshop, children’s activities and plenty of opportunities to support local businesses and food trucks.
Featured performers during the parade and throughout the day include the Mansfield St. Peter’s Cheer Squad, Shaw Marching Band, the EnRichMent Drumline, the Linden McKinley Marching Band, The Best & Two Scoops Linedance, the Mansfield Community Choir, Jesus Jewels, FIELD Strong Step Team, CHAWA, The Jerry Powell Experience, CONNE, DJ Klassik and Emcee Jaylon Scott.
Lee said this year, there will be space designated for people to sit and watch the performance. Attendees are encouraged to bring lawn chairs or umbrellas.
More than 65 vendors, including nine food trucks, will be onsite.
“It’s double what we had last year,” Lee said. “It’s a mixture of community vendors and black-owned businesses.”
The health fair will have resources for physical, mental and spiritual health.
“We’ll have health screenings, we’ll have mental health awareness, informational booths, the Domestic Violence Shelter and just general resources where people can get help,” Lee said.
Representatives from Mansfield City Schools and the Ohio State University will also be available to offer enrollment assistance.
A kids’ zone will include activities led by the Buckeye Imagination Museum, the Renaissance Theater, a local quilter’s group and Bee Kind Kids. There will also be carnival-style games with small prizes available.
The line dancing workshop will begin at 12:45 p.m.
The main branch of the Mansfield-Richland County Public Library will host a meet-and-greet with Black authors from around Ohio from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Autographs and copies of their work will be available.
Featured authors include Chambrell Bond (Nailing the NCLEX), Kami Holt (Back to Me and Made for You), Muriel Brooks (Renell of Oakenwaldt Avenue), Loretta Hilliard (A History of Notable African-Americans in Richland County, Ohio), Jamihla Young (Broken Road to Redemption), Michael F. Williams (The Brown Crayon) and Dr. Wanda J. Sprinkle (titles to be announced)
For more information on Mansfield’s Juneteenth activities, visit the event’s Facebook page.
About Juneteenth
Juneteenth is an annual commemoration of June 19, 1865, when the last slaves in the United State were finally free.
Even though President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, it hadn’t been enforced in Confederate-controlled territories.
The Civil War ended a few months earlier, but news traveled slowly.
On June 19, around 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, armed with a military order declaring “all slaves are free.”
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation form the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.
The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
— General Order No. 3, issued by Major General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865
In the years that followed, African Americans continued to celebrate June 19 as a day of freedom and liberation.
Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday in 1979. Other states followed, but Juneteenth did not become a federal holiday until 2021.
