The 33rd Annual Madison Juneteenth Day Celebration: Sankofa-Fueled Progress
Annie Weatherby-Flowers co-founded Madison’s Juneteenth Day Celebration 33 years ago with Mona Adams Winston.
By Jonathan Gramling
There is a saying that there is nothing new under the sun. It’s just packaged differently. And so, according to Annie Weatherby-Flowers, co-founder and chair of Madison’s Juneteenth Day Celebration, it is important for African Americans, particularly African American youth, to learn their past so that they understand the present and plan for the future. And so the theme for this year’s celebration is “Embracing Our Past to Define Our Future.” And like in many earlier periods of African American history, much has been lost during the past 2-3 years.
“The residual effects of COVID-19 are that we need to embrace our past because there are a lot of things that came into play based on race, socioeconomic status in terms of who fared well and who did not,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “At one time, our community believed that education was the great equalizer. And so there is two years of loss learning for our kids. There are two years of lost time and our college students are catching up. And there is two years of lost time being homebound and isolated and marginalized as a group. It kind of reminded me of post-slavery and Reconstruction where people were coming out of a pandemic for us, but still not having a place, still being marginalized, still being persecuted. And I just thought, ‘Let’s learn from the past.’ That is why we have Juneteenth. And this year, we’re focusing a lot on equity and Black health and wellness on our panels.”
And what is happening in the political field isn’t anything new either.
“There is redistricting, gerrymandering and all of the stuff that is coming back,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “Our kids need to understand that these are not new processes. Like my grandmother said, ‘Racism never died. It just went to college.’ I really believe that and I am seeing that. I can hear my grandmother’s voice and her words that ring true today. It is more strategic. It’s more structured. It’s more institutionalized. It used to just be blatant. And it was just what it was. But now, it has become systemic because they have to get around the laws that have been put in place. And so we also have to embrace out past in order to divine our future. We need to embrace what we’ve been through, what it took and then build on that to define where we go.”
Weatherby-Flowers also sees a pattern to the gun violence that is impacting America.
“If we start to map these random shootings and connect it to all of the propaganda coming out of the political conversations and soundbites, then we might see a correlation of those things that happen in our community,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “Every 2-4 years, it seems that we get these massive shootings since 2008 when Obama was elected. It has ramped up. What is driving that? Fear, hatred, propaganda and things that you really had to search for before. But because we are technologically wired, our kids, our young people can get brainwashed and get connected with the wrong kinds of things on all of the social media sites. And then there are the sound bites on all of the commercials. I was listening to one with Ron Johnson. It talked about all of the spending that the Democrats had done. But the Democrats had to rescue the people from the Trump Administration. So let’s tell the history. We’ll know that they inherited all of this crazy mess. And then when Joe Biden got into office, the country was in chaos. But the rich and famous got paid with the first stimulus money. That first trillion dollars went to businesses. It didn’t go to people. And so I want our community to really embrace its history so that it can define its future.”
While Juneteenth traditionally focused on a celebration in Penn Park on the Saturday closest to June 19th, Juneteenth Day, it has now evolved into a series of virtual presentations and podcasts that focus on self-worth and self-care. And it also talks about health that can also be understood through history.
“I’ve got a lot of autoimmune diseases and there isn’t a lot of research,” Weatherby=Flowers noted. “They give me medicine that works for one group of people and almost killed me. My heart was impacted by it. Plaqenil is a go to drug for lupus and it almost killed me. I did code in 2016 during a road trip with my husband. They found it was the medicine. I want to get our community involved in research in wellness and ancestry. I’ve been doing my ancestry and I can trace my maternal family back to William McWillie who was the 22nd governor of Mississippi and a large plantation owner in the community where my grandparents derive from. I’m tracing back because if I am eighth generation and there are eight generations of white folks sitting at the table, then I think DNA will put me in the same seat if you go by legacy and heredity. It’s another pathway to reparations. It’s another way to find to where your connection is and it’s often a connection to wealth and other kinds of things. Is it a connection to lost land? I think there are a lot of things that being involved in research helps, especially genetically.”
But the heart of Juneteenth is the festival, which begins with the Juneteenth Parade that starts from Fountain of Life Church and ends at Penn Park. Governor Evers will be addressing the people gathered for the parade this year as he tries to make it to many of the Juneteenth celebrations on Saturday. And then there is a park-full of fun and education.
“We’re partnering with the Madison Jazz Consortium and the Blues Consortium,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “Depending on what COVID-19 ratings are, we may have, like last year, the quartet come who will then perform at the Madison Jazz Fest. We have our Juneteenth Band and local performers. We’re going to have our Teen Tent, a Church Tent and UW-Madison and Dr. Roderquita Moore, the Kitchen Chemist, who is going to do an outdoor science fair. It’s going to have 15 stations this year. We have MOSES and EXPO sponsoring the basketball tournament. We’re supplying referees and t-shirts and trophies. We’re going to have the Heritage Area, but it’s going to be presentations and historical displays from the Wisconsin Historical Society. The Madison Public Library is also involved with that. We’re hoping to display some of the figurines and artifacts that Ms. Milele had and some of mine. We have all of the health networks. The Madison Mallards just called inquiring about being involved. Exact Science is going to be there with a picture booth and do a presentation on Cancer and Black and Brown. People will be talking about breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer. We have Madison/Dane County Public Health. We have a lot of folks who are interested. It’s kind of like the old days.”
There are multimodal ways to get to Juneteenth in Penn Park, which does not have any available parking and parking on the street is very limited.
“We used to have 15,000 people in that park,” Weatherby-Flowers recalled. “We’ll have people come in waves like before. People can park in the Villager Mall, Fountain of Life, and Mt. Zion Baptist Church. They can take a bus from a Park & Ride and get off at the south transfer point. People can get on the city bus or walk or ride a bike.”
Come on out to celebrate freedom and enjoy some down home African American culture.