How Protest and Art Inspired Downtown Cleveland’s First Juneteenth Celebration

Karamu House and others are helping turn their work into a way to celebrate Black history in Northeast Ohio. By Julia Lombardo

On June 15, Clevelanders will head downtown to sing, dance and celebrate Juneteenth, which marks the end of slavery in the United States. This joyous occasion is a new tradition for the city – one rooted in rage, triumph, legacy and an ongoing fight for equality.

Cleveland has always played an important role in black history. The city’s East Side neighborhoods were teeming with black businesses and developments in the early 1900s. The city elected the nation’s first black mayor of a major city in 1967, and Martin Luther King Jr. has been to Cleveland more than a dozen times. In 2020, the racial debate surrounding the #BlackLivesMatter movement carried the torch of these pioneers.

That year, a few weeks before Juneteenth, protests against police brutality took over the city center. The protests turned violent. Seventy people were arrested and property was damaged.

When businesses began boarding up their windows, Downtown Cleveland Alliance, now Downtown Cleveland Inc., brought in local artists to fill these blank canvases. The movement grew into the #VoicesofCLE public art project, a joint effort across the city at the height of the pandemic to spark conversation and participation around the growing movement for equality. These pieces humanize the faces, places, and experiences of families and neighbors of color, creating community in a time of isolation.

“He established himself as a conduit between visual artists and property,” says Heather Holmes Dillard, founder and co-chair of Freedom Fest. “Essential workers and residents stopped where these artists were, had conversations with artists, cried, talked. It was a truly healing moment.

As stories filled these panels, Karamu House, the nation’s oldest African-American theater, filled its stage with a story of its own, performing Freedom on Juneteenth on June 19, 2020. The piece commented on current events and discrimination against black communities. The original piece shocked Cleveland — and then the rest of the Internet. The local production caused a sensation.

“Our goal was to reach about 10,000 people,” says Tony Sias, president and CEO of Karamu House. “In the first 48 hours, we reached around 50,000 people virtually. »

The following year, Karamu House, Downtown Cleveland Inc., MetroHealth and others used advocacy and community momentum to launch Cleveland’s first-ever Juneteenth celebration: Freedom Fest. The event, now in its fourth year, takes place June 15 at the C Mall. In its first year, more than 10,000 attendees showed up to celebrate and activate Cleveland’s black culture.

“The basis of Juneteenth Freedom Fest is to celebrate emancipation from slavery,” says Holmes Dillard, “but all of the sponsors and partners are really trying to be intentional about the educational components and resources that we make available. I want people to see how deeply rooted black history is here in Cleveland.

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