Jamestown’s Juneteenth celebration returns with food, music and history

JAMESTOWN — The second annual Jamestown Juneteenth Celebration includes food, art and learning about African American culture.

The Stutsman County Human Rights Coalition and The Arts Center in Jamestown is partnering with Fred’s Dissonance and DJ 1PrettyRicky with WEAREONE, a DJ collective and social agency, for the Juneteenth event that will be held from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, June 12, at Hansen Arts Park. The event is free to attend.

The event celebrates African American history through food, music and storytelling. The event includes activities for all ages, including free food, outdoor celebration, kids’ handprint tree mural, Juneteenth T-Shirt making, musical instrument creation, local performances and youth-led presentations.

Fred’s Dissonance is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to cultivating unity and empowerment through art, education and community well-being, according to its website

Juneteenth marks the day — June 19, 1865 — when federal troops went to Galveston, Texas, to ensure all enslaved people were freed. The troops’ arrival in Galveston happened two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation declared all people held as slaves are free.

The event was moved from a Saturday to a Thursday because the Jamestown community is already familiar with coming to the Downtown Arts Market at the Hansen Arts Park on that day, said Richard Pallay III, also known as 1PrettyRicky and owner of WEAREONE. He said organizers are hoping that even more people will come this year to the Arts Park.

John M. Steiner / The Jamestown Sun

Last year’s event drew about 175 people, said Heather McDougall, a member of the Juneteenth planning committee.

“We also want to be conservative in that sense, but that exceeded our initial goals,” she said, referring to the number of attendees.

Fred Edwards, founder of Fred’s Dissonance, said he’s excited for this year’s event. He said last year’s event included the introduction to the concept of a Juneteenth celebration.

“I’m really looking forward to this year, and especially with our theme kind of revolving around this family cookout is this idea of just having even more intimate connections,” he said. “ … We wanted to be more intentional this year, to be even more … direct and more poignant and really have some more intimate conversations and sometimes even harder conversations that I think we’re really good at like skating over, ‘Oh, we’ll just kind of float right over that one because it makes us uncomfortable.’ We’re really hoping that we can … in years to come continue to have these kind of conversations where people can get to know more and can get to know more about the history even if it does make them uncomfortable because in the uncomfortableness there’s growth.”

Edwards said Jamestown has African American history and it’s important for people to learn about that history from an abundance mindset versus a slavery or scarcity mindset.

“But, because it may not be a priority or a value or it might put people in a position where they feel uncomfortable, it becomes something where you have to kind of have a very intimate and intentional conversation about it,” he said.

Edwards said Juneteenth is the oldest holiday in the U.S.

Masaki Ova / The Jamestown Sun file photo

“These cultural exchanges, telling people about history in their region creates conversation and dialog that we believe also enhances people’s wants or cultural experiences,” he said.

This year’s theme is “Family Cookout.” Pallay said the first half of the event will be focused around a meal.

“That’s kind of what brings people in,” he said. “We’ll have monologues with a conversation to really be able to engage specifically and directly in that intimacy.”

He said the second half of the event will include a celebration of the art and a connection of the bigger meaning of Juneteenth.

“That’ll specifically be happening from the stage at the Hansen Arts Park,” Pallay said.

Jerome Zamgba, Juneteenth planning committee and owner of JayCon Grocery in Jamestown, said organizers want to showcase African food, which might not be familiar to many people in the community.

“We want to be able to showcase that one of our specialties will be the jolloff rice,” he said. “We had a little bit of that last Juneteenth, and we’ll have more of that this June on Juneteenth, and much more, three, four dishes of African culture.”

Pallay said the “Family Cookout” theme is a traditional and significant cultural piece for African Americans. He said a family cookout is like a family reunion where there is a head chef and everyone else contributes a different component to the cookout.

“We’re not necessarily asking anyone in Jamestown to bring anything in particular because we want to provide but we want them to have that same kind of feeling that when you’re here,” he said. “ … That’s a very intimate thing to do with the person, to sit down with somebody to share a meal together, especially a home cooked meal together with another group that you may know or maybe a stranger. So we really wanted to bring some of an intentional intimacy and an intentional connection with Fred’s Dissonance, with the city of Jamestown, and we hope that they reciprocate that same way and feel that love that we’re communicating from us to them.”

Zamgba said youth from the United Presbyterian Church in Jamestown will perform a play about Benjamin Hayes, an African American who moved to Jamestown in 1882.