Robin Kelly

“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round, turn me round, turn me round,” Saxophonist Arthur Scales sang at the village of Glenwood’s Juneteenth celebration Friday, as a crowd of dozens clapped and sang along. “I’m gonna keep on walking, keep on talking, marching to the freedom land.”

Residents of Glenwood and surrounding communities gathered Friday to commemorate Juneteenth.

The holiday marks June 19, 1865, the day Union soldiers reached Galveston, Texas, and freed the last enslaved people in the country, more than two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

“Freedom is not just a moment frozen in history,” said Glenwood Mayor Toleda Hart. “It’s a daily call to action for each of us.”

Glenwood Trustee Edward Hadnott said that to him, Juneteenth marked “the end of a very dark period in American history.”

“I never understood the vitriol of some people, thinking this is somehow unnecessary,” Hadnott said. “Who would not want to celebrate the end of slavery?”

Glenwood, like many of its surrounding communities in the south suburbs, is majority Black, which makes Juneteenth especially significant to its residents, Trustee Michelle Mosley said.

“Black people don’t get celebrated in this country in the way that they should,” Mosley said. “We need to be free. We need to celebrate our history.”

Communities across the south suburbs held events commemorating Juneteenth, including Hazel Crest, Calumet City and Flossmoor.

U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, the keynote speaker at Glenwood’s ceremony, said the holiday represented a long history of Black resilience in America.

“We have continued to bleed in the fight for our freedom and civil rights, from Selma to Little Rock to Pullman,” Kelly said.

That struggle is still ongoing, Kelly said, in the form of recent attacks on Black civil rights, in particular the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

“These are dark times, but on this day, let Juneteenth stand for our grit,” Kelly said. “We know how to make lemonade out of lemons, and we know how to find a way when there is no way.”

Kelly and Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, who is running for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives Kelly currently holds, both emphasized the importance of foregrounding Black histories and narratives.

“There are elected officials who want to whitewash our history. They want to erase the integral part that Black people played in this, America’s 250th year,” Miller said. “There is no America without Black people.”

For some at the ceremony, the opening of the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side the day before, a monument to the country’s first Black president, was top of mind. For others, it was the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an icon of the civil rights movement, in February.

Scales, who had traveled with Jackson during his life, referenced the “I Am Somebody” poem Jackson had often recited, including in his famous 1972 appearance on Sesame Street.

“‘I may be Black, but I am somebody,'” Scales said. “The person that wrote that was Jacqueline Jackson. She was in the household and she was telling him off, and she told him, ‘I am somebody,’ and he took it and ran with it.”

Scales closed out the ceremony with a rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” on his saxophone, which he continued to play while leading attendees from the ceremony down the street to the community celebration.

“Everybody comes out to celebrate the culture,” said Anita Jones, who attended the festival with her husband, Reginald. “Juneteenth, it means a lot. It’s a time of celebration. It’s a time of freedom.”

Jones lives in Calumet City, she said, but came to Glenwood for the celebration. After leaving Glenwood, she was planning on going to a community celebration in Dolton, she said.

“If you’re free, you’re free,” Jones said. “After today, stay free. No matter what the world shows us and no matter what’s going on in the world, freedom starts inside of yourself.”

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