Hundreds of Southeast Queens residents celebrated Juneteenth at the 5th annual Juneteenth in Queens Celebration at Roy Wilkins Park in Jamaica, on Thursday, June 19. Celebrants donned festive t-shirts and sang, danced, and ate as they enjoyed a day filled with multiple performances, offerings from local BIPOC vendors, soul food, and more.
During the event, Tunisia Morrison, co-founder of the Voice of Youth Changes Everything Inc. (V.O.Y.C.E.) and founder of the celebration, received a citation from Rep. Gregory Meeks in recognition of her organizing efforts to bring the celebration to the neighborhood. “This event started as a march to rally during the Black Lives Matter protest,” Morrison said. “ If you live in this community, you know that the Black people in this community have worked so hard to keep it looking like us, feeling like us, being owned by us, it is tough work…Southeast Queens is holding it down.”
In 2020, legislation introduced in part by local Assembly Member Alicia Hyndman was passed to recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday. The holiday holds historical and cultural significance to the African-American community as it commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. after the Civil War.
Social media influencer Shiggy and “Average Joe” actress Ashley Olivia Fisher emceed this year’s Juneteenth festival.
Audience members were also treated to a Queens Rap Cypher featuring hometown stars Kyah Baby, Nyemiah Supreme, and TGIFLY and a spiritual performance by Iyanna Gregory, the daughter of late comedian and author Dick Gregory. DJ Envy, DJ G Money, and DJ Shad P also performed live DJ sets.
Many residents donned festive clothing- red, black, and green to represent the Pan African flag—and danced throughout the day during the celebratory event. A few locals spoke to QNS about their personal relationship with Juneteenth and what the celebration means to them as Black Americans.
“We’re here with Rochdale Line Dance, and looking forward to just being on stage. We came here last year and we got the t-shirts,” said Etsuko Meleschi, a Rochdale resident. Meleschi added that Juneteenth represents the “end of slavery, a federal holiday, and being free.”
Brandon Chastang, Janifer Taylor, and Jerome McKnight represented Life Camp, a South Queens-based gun and gang violence prevention organization, at the Juneteenth event. Life Camp provided foot massages to attendees to promote therapeutic wellness in the community.
The trio agreed that Life Camp’s presence at the celebration helped to enforce the organization’s message in imparting an anti-gun violence message to local youth. “This is our day; every day should be our day. This is gun violence awareness month, men’s mental health awareness month, our men are dying from diabetes, stress, depression, and hypertension, so all of this belongs under the Juneteenth umbrella, and this is what Life Camp is here for,” Chastang said.
Locals patronized a wide range of food vendors, including Big Boyy Master Grilling and Catering and Riri Funnel Cake. Besides delicious food, there were a number of small businesses that provided custom clothing, paintings, and other specialty products.
Roderick Douglass, a New York native, attended the festival to promote his first book, “Starting Somewhere: Community Organizing for Socially Awkward People Who’ve Had Enough.” Douglass is currently on an international book tour and felt the Juneteenth in Queens Celebration was the perfect celebration to share how community organizing could positively impact local communities. “It’s basically about how you can coordinate events like this, or community meetings, protests, mutual aid, and make it sustainable so the community benefits from it, whether the organization sustains or not,” he said.
Ysmyne Scott, founder of Trap Safely, said she was promoting her business, which puts a positive spin on the word “trap,” which often has a negative connotation. “ My best friend and I founded the business about 10 years ago, and we’re both into fashion. He just texted me one day and said trap safely. I changed the logo up… and we started putting it on dad hats and just ran from there,” Scott said. “ We both have regular jobs, and we’re just trying to bring more of a positive light to the word trap.” Scott, a Rochdale resident, said this was her third year at the Juneteenth in Queens event.
Zuwa Edobor, founder of Royal Preisthood, sold embroidered hoodies, hats, sweatshirts, and other clothing that had African fabric patterns and images of Black civil rights leaders and cultural icons.
“What I try to do is fuse urban wear with modern-day African culture. Everything has a story, and African fabric is with it, and it’s all connected back to the continent,” explained Edobor. “Juneteenth is a very important day for our people, and a lot of [leaders] that we have are essential to civil rights…it means everything, and I am always about promoting Black culture. I have people like Malcom X, Bob Marley, Mandela, and all those people who pushed forward black people [on my clothing].”
Christina Mceachern, founder of Candle Lit Yogi, hosted free yoga lessons for festival goers to celebrate health, wellness, and bodily autonomy. “It’s Juneteenth, and it’s our celebration of our community, and I love to do anything community-based. This is my first time here as a vendor; I’ve been here the past two years as a guest,” she said. Mceachern has been in operation since 2022, and is based in Queens at Spa Castle. She hosts a bi-weekly yoga series that she previewed to festival goers. Mceachern also hosts a sunset yoga and full moon series and will be presenting the series beginning on Aug. 9th.
Elected officials, including Assembly Member Alicia Hyndman, Rep. Gregory Meeks, Lt. Governor Antonio Delgado, Assembly Member Kahleel Anderson, and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, took the stage during the celebration to give celebratory remarks to the crowd.
Mayoral candidate and Democratic primary frontrunner Zohran Mamdani briefly spoke to QNS about the historical significance of the Juneteenth holiday.
“Ultimately, Juneteenth is such a beautiful day, it’s the day that we celebrate the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, and yet we also know that freedom is only as good as our ability to exercise it,” he said. “For so many African Americans, the Emancipation Proclamation was not the end of that oppression; it continued, whether it was sharecropping, Jim Crow, and the general sense of the hierarchy of citizenship. We are still dealing with the legacy of that today. So to be here and to celebrate how far we’ve come and how far there is still to go, it is truly meaningful to me.”
Mamdani also added that if elected, he wants to focus on retaining Black New Yorkers, as many have migrated out of the city in recent years. “As someone looking to be the next mayor of this city, one of the things I want to ensure is that we make this city more affordable to all and bring an end to the exodus, especially of Black New Yorkers who have had to leave the city because of how expensive we made it,” he said.
