Tunes, aromatic foods and warm laughter will take over Southside as celebrations erupt for the Juneteenth festival on Saturday. This year, the festival takes on the theme “Stay Awake and Resist.”
Hosted by the Southside Community Center, the annual festival will take place on the intersection of Cleveland Ave and South Plain Street from noon to 6 p.m. The event is open and free to all.
Akin to a “big block party,” the festival will host Black vendors, artists and performers and hundreds of Ithaca residents, said Chavon Bunch, executive director of the Southside Community Center.
“[Growing up,] Juneteenth here in Ithaca was education, but [also] seeing all of my people — or people that look like me — in the neighborhood,” Bunch said.
What is Juneteenth?
On June 19, 1865, Union troops marched into Galveston, Texas, and ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, which decreed the end of slavery in the Confederate states. In freeing over 250,000 enslaved people in Texas, the day of freedom marked a turning point in African American history.
The newly freed people in Texas deemed the day “Juneteenth” — a wordplay on the date June 19.
Declared a national holiday in 2021, Juneteenth now takes the form of celebration for Black Americans, as well as a reminder to fight for justice. Black communities across the country gather with family and friends to enjoy community events and commemorate African American resilience.
The Southside Community Center teaches a Black Consciousness Curriculum and Bunch said that the center hosts the Juneteenth festival partly as a means to fill an educational gap in textbooks and teach Black history.
“We're educating one person at a time,” Bunch said. “We laugh, we talk, but there's also a chance to give people some knowledge they didn't have.”
What to Expect
On Saturday, the festival will be filled with local businesses, or “co-conspirators” as Bunch calls them. The community can anticipate Soul Food, Caribbean dishes, baked goods and more to dance on their taste buds while local children dance on stage. Vendors will arrive with crafts, plants and goods in tow for attendees to browse amid a backdrop of lively music and mirth.
“You can't help but come out and hear the music,” Bunch said. “That bass starts hitting and it's like ‘What in the world is going on?’ Then you come out and there's people, there's food, there's dancing.”
Right after the COVID-19 pandemic, Bunch recalled the magnetism of the festival among the community. That year, in classic Ithaca-fashion, rain interrupted the festival, but instead of heading home, the community started dancing through the rain, “happy to just be with each other,” Bunch said.
Ultimately, Bunch emphasized that this event is an important and fun way for the community center to showcase Black culture and history. In addition to the bustling festivities, the Juneteenth festival offers a haven for Ithacans to engage with one another and appreciate Black culture, community and history.
“We need to educate folk,” Bunch said. “We need to make sure that, especially now in these times, our history doesn't get erased.”
Varsha Bhargava is a reporter at the Ithaca Times and a news editor at The Cornell Daily Sun working on The Sun’s summer fellowship. This article was previously published in The Ithaca Times.
Varsha Bhargava is a news editor for the 143rd Editorial Board and a member of the Class of 2027 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be reached at vbhargava@cornellsun.com.
