For organizer Makeda Peterson, this year’s JuneteenthKC Heritage Festival will mark several firsts, like the city’s first time celebrating America’s “second Independence Day” while hosting a World Cup.
“Having the ability to welcome an international audience to learn more about our culture and our community,” Peterson said, “that's an amazing opportunity for our organization, and for our communities to really share what the African American experience is like here in the United States.”
That’s why Peterson said the festival is focused on highlighting and promoting Kansas City specifically.
“We were kind of adamant on being that it’s 100% about Kansas City and Kansas City culture, and really promoting that as a way for people to learn more and just engage with a genuine cultural experience,” she said.
Kansas Citians will celebrate 15 years of the annual JuneteenthKC Heritage Festival in the Historic 18th and Vine district with a two-day event this weekend.
This year’s festival is also the first since the transformed pedestrian mall between the Paseo and Woodland Avenue was completed, along 18th Street.
The pathway was made to be more walkable and more adaptable — Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas called it “urban planning at its best” during its grand opening in May.
“When people ask us, ‘When are you done investing in 18th and Vine?’ The answer is never," Lucas said at the time.
For Peterson, the celebration will show visitors the support that the Historic 18th and Vine district has received from Kansas City.
“It's been a year of working through the growing pains of construction, but this will be the first year we'll be able to really truly see the pedestrian mall in its full glory,” she said. “This makes it a big year.”
The pedestrian mall is part of Kansas City’s $400 million “Revive the Vine” investment into the historic district. The funding is helping revitalize iconic sites like the Boone Theater, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the American Jazz Museum and even an outdoor roller rink in Blues Park. Investment has also included a $20 million parking garage at 18th Street and Lydia Avenue.
Peterson’s father is responsible for another first. Horace M. Peterson III is the one responsible for bringing the first Juneteenth celebration to Kansas City, in 1980. The holiday celebrates emancipation, and the news of the Emancipation Proclamation reaching the enslaved people of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.
The elder Peterson, a historian and archivist, also founded the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City in 1974.
That first Juneteenth in Kansas City, the Black Archives sponsored an exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art showing the original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. Ten thousand Kansas Citians went to see it.
‘The renaissance that’s going on’
At the newly restored Boone Theater, named after the Missourian ragtime musician and pianist John William “Blind” Boone, co-owner Shomari Benton said the $8.7 million restoration was a “labor of love.”
“It's another piece of the puzzle for the Vine district, and represents the renaissance that's going on in the district,” Benton said.
For Juneteenth, the theater, now home to the Black Movie Hall of Fame and the Black Repertory Theater, will screen “An Evening With Sarah Rector: ‘The Untold Story.’” Rector was an American oil magnate and millionaire who lived in Kansas City as a young woman, on 12th Street, near the 18th and Vine district.
The JuneteenthKC Heritage Festival will begin at 4 p.m. on Friday, June 19, at noon on Saturday, June 20. The free event will include a kids zone, local food vendors, a health and cooling center and musical performances. On Saturday night, hip hop artist Common will perform.
