The Lansing Juneteenth Freedom Festival featured hip-hop performers, soul food, gospel music, head-wrapping demonstrations and an MSU-led “instrument petting zoo,” among other celebratory activities.
The festival is part of the country-wide commemoration of emancipation known as Juneteenth, which dates back to June 19, 1866, the year after federal troops marched into Texas to enforce the emancipation of all enslaved blacks in the state, who were among the last to be freed.
The Lansing Juneteenth Freedom Festival started from humble beginnings as a backyard church event 21 years ago, board member of the Lansing Juneteenth Committee Cheryl Benjamin said.
Benjamin said the festival was about knowing and sharing history and the opportunities made available through struggles of those who came before.
“It’s important to know your history,” Benjamin said. “The thing is knowing where you came from, recognizing those that blessed you beforehand and sharing that knowledge and culture to those who are before you.”
Willie Davis, an education and sociology professor at Lansing Community College, likened Juneteenth to the Fourth of July.
“I always look at (slavery) as an interlude in our history, because we were not slaves, we were enslaved,” Davis said. “We came out of a forced enslavement of a free people, so now we’ve returned back to our free selves.”
The festival also offered participants two days focused on strengthening community bonds.
Some children at the festival took part in the music with the MSU Community Music School bringing out an assortment of brass and woodwind instruments, staging an instrument petting zoo.
Vocal performance senior Katherine Nunn, who was working the event Saturday, stressed the importance of music in children’s lives..
“The arts programs are just being cut more and more,” Nunn said. “It’s so important to give (children) this experience and let them try things, because even if they do have some sort of program, a lot of times they can’t afford instruments.”
