Neighbors in communities across Metro Detroit spent time honoring the Juneteenth holiday.
Celebrations included parades, service projects, and other community gathers on Wednesday (June 19).
Neighbors in Highland Park began the day with a 5-K Run and Walk.
Hundreds of people lined the streets for the city’s Juneteenth parade. As participants arrived, the Highland Park Fire Department opened a hydrant to help keep people cool in the heat.
Children and adults laughed as they ran and skipped through the water mist.
“My main mission for being here in Highland Park is to show people that Highland Park is here,” said Demond Petty, Founder of the Juneteenth Detroit Festival. “They’re a community that loves themselves, and that fights for what they are supposed to have.”
Families on Detroit’s west side were also focused on unity. Destiny and Nicholas Tarver were among a group of neighbors who organized their community’s inaugural Juneteenth Festival and Juneteenth Financial Freedom March.
“We decided, along with a few other people in the community, to actually walk to see what do we need as people,” said Destiny Tarver.
Their neighborhood group wanted to use the Juneteenth holiday to help mobilize residents.
Members are working to launch a neighborhood cooperative. They said they are working to help turn the page for positive and productive community improvement.
“Having a legal entity as a cooperative is saying as a neighborhood we are coming together, not just our funds and financials, but our resources,” said Nicholas Tarver.
Members of the Marygrove Neighborhood Association said they want to encourage everyone to have an active stake in the area and its potential.
“In neighborhoods like this, where people have been here their whole lives, we want to make sure that they feel their voice is heard,” Destiny Tarver said.
Miles away at DABO’s Bridge Center, hundreds of people gathered for a community Juneteenth program that included a food distribution event, health care screenings, and other programs.
“People are hungry,” said Rev. Horace Sheffield as he observed the crowd. “People are hurting. People have needs. So, we thought Juneteenth, which symbolizes a late notice of our freedom, we’d try to take an additional burden off of people.”