Three Rivers Juneteenth celebration draws 90 people
The City of Three Rivers saw its first-ever Juneteenth celebration Friday at The Huss Project, as widespread awareness of the holiday has grown in recent weeks with a resurgence in racial justice movements.
Falling on June 19 each year, the holiday recognizes the day in 1865 when the last slaves in the United States in Galveston, Texas learned of slavery’s abolition. When the news arrived, it was met with song, dance, prayer and food. Juneteenth became an instant tradition that quickly spread to African American communities in other states. It finally became a Texas state holiday in 1980, and in a few other places followed.
Aundrea Sayrie, a lifelong poet who organizes Three Rivers open mic events, also spearheaded the Juneteenth event, which centered on a series of livestreamed performances in Kalamazoo that were projected onto a large screen at the Huss pavilion. Six acts performed, including musicians, DJs, and poets. Sayrie’s contacts with the people involved in the Kalamazoo event helped her to bring the event together at Huss. The host of the webcast was Yolonda Lavender, a Kalamazoo musician who has appeared in the past at Three Rivers HarmonyFest.
Event volunteers spaced chairs out on the lawn to accommodate social distancing, vendors set up in the parking lot, including Weenie Kings, a barbecue vendor, and Colorful Roots.
“It’s good to see everyone out, especially after quarantine, showing solidarity,” Colorful Roots Owner Brandi Peterson said.
(Deborah Haak-Frost|Watershed Voice)
The event, which ran from 1 to 5 p.m., drew an attendance of about 90 people over the course of the afternoon. “It’s a nice event. It’s overdue. I just think we should have been celebrating this for a very long time,” said Mike King of Weenie Kings.
The idea began among an informal group of people who met through open-mic events at Lowry’s Books, and who organized the peaceful protest on Monday, June 1 around the killing of George Floyd. Sayrie’s husband Torrey Brown said it was the “same group, just coming up with ideas. We work well together. She wanted to have a picnic, you know, bringing the community together, and my thought was ‘Juneteenth,’ and we just ran with it and we ended up here,” Brown said. “(It’s) her baby, I’m proud of her.”
Brown, who has lived in Three Rivers since high school, has never attended a Juneteenth event before. “There’s never been anything around me where there was something, so that’s why this was born,” he said. He and Sayrie have been impressed with attendance numbers. They predicted perhaps 15 or 20 attendees at both the 300-strong protest and the Juneteenth event. “What that tells me is people are hungry for change, and they just don’t know how to go about it,” Brown said, “if we have to take on that mantle, then we’ll do that.”
Even though there was joint momentum between the protest and the Juneteenth event, Brown sees them as being different things. “The rally was because the consistent murdering of African-Americans, and you know, we’re just getting tired of it. And you know, Juneteenth should be a national holiday, but it’s not, so we’re bringing awareness to that.” Brown paraphrased a recent anecdote from a Dave Chappelle monologue in which the comedian had a teaching moment with an audience member, saying “The more people that get the knowledge and wherewithal about what’s going on, they change from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.”
City Commissioner Clayton Lyczynski attended a portion of Friday’s celebration. “I think it’s a great opportunity for community and for education. For example, I had never heard of Juneteenth until it came up on my phone in the last few weeks. The event is just another opportunity to bridge racial divisions,” Lyczynski said. “Not to be all 1990s or anything, but can’t we all just get along? Well, we can’t, so let’s figure out why we can’t, and change. I’m here to understand a part of our community that I’m sure I’m undereducated on.”
Brown said it is important that events like these occur in Three Rivers.
“Three Rivers is basically like a miniature form of the nation. We have little bit of everything here,” Brown said. “If we can show that it can work here, we hope that it can spread.”
Brown also said these events reflect the community’s spirit. “Three Rivers has a very good sense of community. Everyone that lives here is proud of here. People don’t want to be known as the racist town. Everybody knows everybody. It’s like an extension of Mayberry,” Brown said, “it just works out.”
Brown spent most of Friday afternoon tending to the grill trailer for his father’s barbecue business, which is brand new. “We’re going to be hopping around town trying to find a hot spot where we sell best, and once we find that spot we’ll be there more. We plan on doing it at least once a week,” Brown said.
(Deborah Haak-Frost|Watershed Voice)
Sayrie, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, has lived in Three Rivers for about eight years after moving to the city with Brown. She discussed the conversation that led to Friday’s event.
“It was like, ‘we have to continue this momentum, we have to keep coming together as a community,’” Sayrie said. “Planning wasn’t very difficult because the live event was already planned in Kalamazoo, so it was just the seating, you know, thanks to Rob (Vander Giessen-Reitsma of Huss and *culture is not optional).”
Sayrie said the event also created a place to discuss issues of race, as opposed to having to take her message into other spaces. “To feel comfortable in a space where I feel like my blackness is celebrated and amplified, and I’m not intruding, you know, it actually feels like people have been invited to this cultural experience and everyone that’s here wants to be,” Sayrie said.
“As a poet, sometimes I feel very compelled to speak on injustice and impose my blackness in that way, but in this sort of capacity it’s not something that happens frequently. It really is a celebration. I don’t get this often. For my children to have that, for people who are my friends throughout the days and years, for us to come together, that’s really special.”
Sayrie said she has seen a real impact from the events the group has organized. “My inbox has been flooded and so has my friends list. Two separate organizations in Sturgis reached out for assistance with planning their own marches and Juneteenth events. It’s been a good thing too, just being able to contribute not just within my own community but knowing that our change is impacting change elsewhere. It’s a ripple effect, and it matters. What we’re doing here is being seen and it’s creating a better world because who knows who is watching Sturgis.”
Sayrie continued, “We have a lot of people who have felt, ever since the Civil War, that it doesn’t matter – that you can picket and yell all you want, that it doesn’t matter, but the truth is it all does. Us continuing to carry that torch, it does matter. We’ve inherited this as a Black community, and it’s just been passed down. It’s worth it. It’s as big as it is because of the pandemic. We all had to just stop and see what was happening, that there really is something going on here.”
Sayrie sees evidence of change locally, specifically after speaking with City Manager Joe Bippus about permitting a mural on Broadway Street. The two discussed why it would be important to the community, and that it would be representative of, and hopeful for, positive change. With Bippus’ help, Sayrie and other community members began the project Sunday morning.
Regarding any future events, Sayrie said, “it’s summertime, so there are cookouts and block parties and super-talented people in town, so there’s opportunity for talent shows. It started from a place of passion. The protest was really just a spontaneous idea, and so was this (event). There’s not a drawn-out plan besides continuing to come together, continuing to meet people and do things as a community, continuing to be of service. We’re just going with the flow.”
Dave Vago is a writer and columnist for Watershed Voice. A Philadelphia native with roots in Three Rivers, Vago is a planning consultant to history and community development organizations and is the former Executive Director of the Three Rivers DDA/Main Street program.
Photo gallery created and curated by Deborah Haak-Frost
