Madison Celebrates America’s “Second Independence Day”: Celebrating 35 Years (Part 2 of 2)
The Juneteenth Committee: First Row: Corinda Rainey-Moore (l-r), Annie Weatherby-Flowers,
Tori Pettaway Second Row: Sonia Spencer from MMSD, Shari Davis from Madison Blues Fest,
Eugene Crisler Back: Rachmaan Weatherby
by Jonathan Gramling
The city of Milwaukee was the first Northern city to host a Juneteenth Day celebration back on June 19, 1972. Back then, Milwaukee’s Black community was doing relatively well — especially in comparison to today — before Milwaukee began losing its industrial base. And Juneteenth grew into a huge celebration. Annie Weatherby-Flowers brought that vision of what Juneteenth is when she moved to Madison in the late 1980s.
After an initial groundswell of support the first year, it was Mona Adams Winston and Weatherby-Flowers who kept the spirit and the celebration alive year in and year out.
At the beginning, Juneteenth had the Madison Inner-City Council on Substance Abuse as its fiscal agent and then moved over to Nehemiah Community Development before striking out on its own.
“After Nehemiah, Mona, you and I started Kujichagulia in 2006 with Jackie Hunt and Tequila Nash,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “Getting that started and just looking at the possibilities of what Juneteenth could represent and incorporate. We did all of that and then we got the parade. Once we started growing as a committee, we had 15-person solid committee of folks from the community who helped us plan Juneteenth for years. We still have David Smith and then we started to recruit other people like Corinda Rainey-Moore. We’ve had people come and go. We had Uncle Izzy, Ed Murray, Wayne Strong, Pam Payne from Fountain of Life, representatives from the Divine Nine and people who were doing things in the community. It’s been a solid group of 10 of us over all of those years. Now we’re older and we need to get younger folks involved. We’ve got people like Joshua Wright, Janine Stephens from Black Women’s Wellness was a coordinator. Tanika Kromah was a coordinator. Fabu Mogaka Carter was the coordinator of the Heritage Tent. We’ve had significant people around the table over the years. We had Dr. Roguita Moore as part of the team as well as Derek Johnson.”
There was another important milestone in 2006 beyond incorporating at Kujichagulia.
“In 2006, we were listed as one of the 10 Best Juneteenths in the nation,” Weatherby-Flowers said.
One of the reasons for Madison’s excellence was on its focus on heritage beyond entertainment.
“We connect locally for ways to heal, ways to reinforce the true essence of what it is to be Black across the Black Diaspora and connecting ourselves with communities across the country,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “We’ve been showing the connection of the African Diaspora. We do beans and rice and African beans. It might be black beans, but it is still beans and rice.”
And it took another big step in 2009.
“When Governor Doyle signed the proclamation designating Juneteenth a State Holiday was significant,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “Mona was there. We had been working with Dr. Ron Meyers as a part of the National Juneteenth Day Movement and State Rep. Spencer Coggs who worked tirelessly to get Wisconsin to declare it a holiday. It was exciting.”
While Penn Park is the “emotional” Home of Juneteenth, it wasn’t always held there.
“We were at the Alliant Energy Center for two years,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “We were at the Monona Terrace. We tried to keep it relevant. We wanted to keep it a festival rain or shine. In doing so, we knew that Penn Park was the place where we had the best attendance. People like the outdoor impact on Juneteenth. We held it in Olin Park for the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth. We wanted to have a bigger celebration and a bigger focus. And so we went to Olin Park that year. And again, it just felt better on the south side. And even though Olin Park is technically on the south side, it wasn’t Penn Park. And so we came back to Penn Park.”
Juneteenth has grown as the number of partners have come into the fold. Over the years, All of Us –Research Project, Center for Collaborative Health Equity, UW Science Alliance, Urban League of Greater Madison, United Way, Madison Black Greek Organizations, African American Council of Churches, Madison Public Library, 100 Black Men of Madison, Women in Focus, the City of Madison Community Police Department, Meriter Hospital Community Engagement Department, First Unitarian Society, Madison Jazz and Blues Fests, the Madison African, African Women and Caribbean Associations, Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison College have all made their mark on the celebration.
In addition to the cropping up of Juneteenth Day celebrations in cities and towns throughout Dane County, what has given Weatherby-Flowers pride — and a sense that Juneteenth made it — is seeing the Juneteenth flag hoisted up throughout the Madison isthmus.
But the most exciting thing to me was when we lifted the flag over the State Capitol,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “As a part of the National, they were getting flags raised across the country. I said, ‘We need to get the flag raised in Madison.’ It first happened in Dane County with Shelia Stubbs getting the flag raised in the county. It was raised over the City-County Building. When Shelia went to the state, I had already been in conversation with governor. Shelia Stubbs and I helped champion getting the flag raised over the State Capitol. Now it is raised over the only place where you can be enslaved, which is the Dane County Jail. Our flag is raised over the Dane County Jail, the City-County Building, the Municipal Building, the State Capitol and UW-Madison. The flag is being raised over lots of institutions and that is because of the work that we have done at Kujichagulia. It is because of the passion and the dedication and all that we contributed, people don’t know that none of us was getting paid.
It’s been 10 years since Adams Winston departed Madison for Mississippi and so Weatherby-Flowers has carried the banner aided by others.
“And I’m still here as the chair,” Weatherby-Flowers said. “This is the first time I’ve thought about whether I am going to last much longer because of age, COVID and other things in my life. I’ve through about of letting go of what Juneteenth could be from the eyes of that 12-year-old girl and the vision of the 65-year-old woman and the love of her community as well as the concerns for the community as well.”
While Weatherby-Flowers is looking for new leadership, it doesn’t mean that she will turn it over to someone who will make it into something that no longer is imbued with the spirit of Juneteenth. Juneteenth has been her baby for 35 years. And not just any new parent will do.
