CLEVELAND (WJW) ¡ª It was a day of celebration. ¡°Black is lovely and it will come in so numerous different shades, arrays, types,¡± claimed Keenan Williams, owner of nyceCO Prints, a monitor printing business. It was also a working day of reflection.?

Rain and glow, Cleveland¡¯s inaugural Juneteenth Flexibility Fest on Shopping mall C downtown was effectively attended and organizers say, a success.

¡°It¡¯s about celebrating flexibility and community and coming with each other as one particular,¡± explained Tony Sias, President and CEO of Karamu House, one particular of the hosts together with Ingenuity Cleveland, Downtown Cleveland Alliance and MetroHealth.

156 several years later, Juneteenth is now a federal holiday getaway. ¡°A whole lot of Black individuals have celebrated Juneteenth for a quite very long time but I think going mainstream with it, it turning into a federal holiday break is very vital due to the fact a lot more cultures will be able to encounter what it¡¯s like to be an African American or rejoice like an African American,¡± explained Williams.?

Juneteenth commemorated the day Union troops arrived into Galveston, Texas to advise enslaved Black folks that they were being absolutely free a lot more than two months after the finish of the Civil War and a lot more than two yrs right after the Emancipation Proclamation experienced been signed.

¡°I notify them that all the time. There are people today that gave their lives for you to have the prospects you men have. So I want them to consider away that this is our record, men and women died for this,¡± claimed attendee Lisa Baker who was with her two sons.

Karamu, the oldest producing African American theater in the nation, executed a live performance entitled ¡°Songs of Liberation.¡±

¡°Art is a reflection of culture and we use art as a motor vehicle towards social improve and comprehension,¡± reported Sias.?

Grammy Award winning artists and other special guests took the phase to inspire attendees.?

¡°Watching you know, African folks perform and doing their dances, that was the cool section,¡± reported Preston Baker.

General performance artists had been joined by visual artists producing vivid murals and a public art venture gave persons area to compose their ideas about independence and getting listened to.

And additional than 20 Black-owned organizations and business owners had been highlighted in the Seller Village.

¡°It¡¯s fantastic to know what the people that glimpse like you are undertaking in your town,¡± claimed Williams.

Most drastically the organizers hope this independence fest influenced the local community to be educated and activated.

¡°It¡¯s an opportunity to you know confront the past, search at the issues we¡¯re struggling with in this article in the present but I assume also to really place on full display the type of town that we¡¯re developing. The variety of town that we want to be,¡± reported Michael Deemer, Interim President & CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

¡°It¡¯s searching at voting legal rights, on the lookout at systemic racism and eradication of that. How do we search at health disparities? So as a group this is springboard into beginning to definitely address those problems,¡± explained Sias.

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