Reesheda Graham-Washington, Head of Kehrein Center, on Thinking Deeply About Juneteenth

Juneteenth (a combination of June and nineteenth) marks the date – June 19, 1865 – when “Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3, which announced to residents of Texas that all enslaved people were now free. Granger commanded the Headquarters District of Texas, and his troops had arrived in Galveston the previous day,” according to the National Archives. 

Formerly enslaved people in Texas have been celebrating that historic day since 1866. In 2021, a year after George Floyd’s murder, Juneteenth was designated a state holiday in Illinois and a federal holiday across the country. 

In her own words, Reesheda Graham-Washington, the new executive director of the Kehrein Center for the Arts, 5628 W. Washington Blvd. in Austin, speaks about her thoughts on how Juneteenth has been remembered since coming to mainstream prominence and her plans as head of the Kehrein Center to reimagine the commemoration.  

‘We got the holiday … and then we started barbecuing’

State Rep. La Shawn Ford passed a bill for the commemoration of Juneteenth [in Illinois] and Opal Lee, an amazing human being in Dallas, Texas, literally walked to the national capitol in an effort to raise the significance of Juneteenth and why it should be celebrated. 

So, we have this day set aside as a holiday, but we don’t completely understand and appreciate the significance of Juneteenth. Rep. Ford would say part of the reason we don’t know is that we’re not doing a good job of teaching history in schools. 

Also, once we got the holiday, we kind of didn’t know what to do with it. We were happy to have it. We kind of understood it had something to do with the freedom of Black people. And then we started barbecuing and we threw parades. But what I don’t feel like we took the opportunity to do is step back and say, ‘What is this holiday? What does it mean? What is it for? And how do we commemorate it in the way it is intended? In the way our ancestors would have wanted us to think about it? 

When you think about the resilience associated with Blackness and Black people, it doesn’t just come out of nowhere, it comes out of a struggle. Resilience is born of struggle. So, how do we use this holiday to hold these two notions of struggle and resilience in tandem with each other and do that in a way that is informed by our collective social identity in Chicago and in a way that is inspired by the beautiful artistic expressions of Black folk, which span music, art, dance – all the genres of artistry.

On the ‘Black Aura’ weekend 

The Black Aura is a weekend: June 28 and June 29. On June 28, we will hold workshops to explore some of these ideas and learn more about the history of Juneteenth. That evening, we’ll screen the documentary “Juneteenth” with Afton Battle, one of the people in the documentary. 

We’ve invited Mama Opal Lee and the curators of the National Juneteenth Museum in Dallas-Fort Worth. 

On Saturday, we’ll host a performance gala. The first part of the evening will be an artistic expression by way of various genres of performance that celebrate the tension between struggle and resilience, specifically as it exists in Chicago — through house music, hip-hop culture and so much more. We’ll also dig into the history of Black people in orchestral music, which people don’t even know is a thing. 

We’ll have various partners, from Ravinia to Lyric Unlimited to Chicago Opera Theater and many others, who will come and be with us as we celebrate this multiplicitous existence called Blackness in Chicago. We hope to build on this year after year. 

On the significance of June 28 and June 29

The June 28 and 29 weekend sits right between Juneteenth and the Fourth of July, or Independence Day. It tugs on these histories, teasing them out and getting present to what they really mean, what they really entail, and how we might be present to the grief of the struggle but also present to the celebration of that resilience we get from it. 

Another reason for the dates is that we don’t want people to feel torn about where to be. We want folks to do their barbecues and parades and all the things they do for Juneteenth, but then let’s get together at the end of the month and get present to what work we haven’t done around how we get present to Juneteenth. 

Having these conversations communally might change the way we celebrate Juneteenth as a city moving forward. 

How To Attend  The Black Aura weekend will occur Friday, June 28, and Saturday, June 29, at the Kehrein Center for the Arts, 5628 W. Washington Blvd. Friday programming is free.  Tickets for Saturday’s gala are $40 (if purchased early), $55 (general) and $75 (VIP). They can be purchased here. For more information, click here.