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 struggle for equality.
Cleveland has always played an important role in Black history. The city’s East Side neighborhoods bustled 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. visited Cleveland more than a dozen times. In 2020, the racial reckoning surrounding the #BlackLivesMatter movement carried the torch of those trailblazers.
That year, weeks before Juneteenth, police brutality protests swelled Downtown. The demonstrations turned violent. Seventy people were arrested and property was damaged.
When businesses began boarding up their windows, Downtown Cleveland Alliance, now Downtown Cleveland Inc., tapped local artists to fill these blank canvases. The movement became #VoicesofCLE Public Art Project, a joint effort across the city in the peak of the pandemic to spark conversation and participation around the growing movement for equality. These pieces humanized the faces, places and experiences of families and neighbors of color, creating community in a time of isolation.
“It stood up to be a conduit between visual artists and property ownership,” says Heather Holmes Dillard, founder and co-chair of the Freedom Fest. “Essential workers and residents stopped where these artists were, had conversations with artists, cried, talked. It was a true healing moment.”
As stories filled these boards, Karamu House, the nation’s oldest producing African American theater, filled its stage with a story of its own, performing Freedom on Juneteenth on June 19, 2020. The play commented on current events and discrimination against Black communities. The original piece shocked Cleveland — and then the rest of the internet. The local production was a viral sensation.
“Our goal was to reach about 10,000 people,” says Karamu House President and CEO Tony Sias. “Within the first 48 hours, we had reached about 50,000 people virtually.”
The following year Karamu House, Downtown Cleveland Inc., MetroHealth and others rode the momentum of advocacy and community to launch Cleveland’s first-ever Juneteenth celebration: Freedom Fest. The event, now in its fourth year, is held June 15 at Mall C. In its first year, more than 10,000 attendees showed up to celebrate and activate Cleveland’s Black culture.
“The basis for the Juneteenth Freedom Fest is celebrating the emancipation of slavery,” Holmes Dillard says, “but the gamut of sponsors and partners are really trying to be intentional about the education components, about the resources that we make available. I want people to see how deep-rooted of Black history we have here in Cleveland.”
For more updates about Cleveland, sign up for our Cleveland Magazine Daily newsletter, delivered to your inbox six times a week.
Cleveland Magazine is also available in print, publishing 12 times a year with immersive features, helpful guides and beautiful photography and design.
