Cincinnati Juneteenth
Festival Celebration

Saturday, June 15th

Eden Park, 12:00-9:00pm

We hope to see you at the Juneteenth Festival in Eden Park on Saturday, June 15th anytime between 12:00pm-9:00pm. The Festival has included diverse, family-centered (and free!) activities such as traditional story telling, teen discussion area, magic acts, sack races, sweet potato pie bake-off, music (blues, African drumming and dancing, gospel, jazz, reggae, etc.) You can also participate in “Wade in the Water” at Smale Park from 2 pm – 4pm on Sunday, June 9.

Juneteenth Cincinnati is dedicated to recognizing enslavement, emancipation, reconstitution, and all that followed as an integral part of American history.

Why do we participate as a faith community in the Cincinnati Juneteenth Festival Celebration?

Hyde Park Community UMC participates in Cincinnati’s Juneteenth Festival Celebration because we believe slavery in any form and white supremacy does not come from God and all people deserve dignity, freedom, and human and civil rights. Along with the Ohio River Valley District of The UMC, we are committed to celebrate the official abolition of slavery in the United States. 

What is Juneteenth?

History and Significance of Juneteenth in the United States:

“On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, leading federal occupation forces some three months after the official end of the Civil War. He immediately proclaimed Texas to be under U.S. authority and re-issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He could hardly have expected his action to give birth to an annual African American freedom celebration.”

History of Juneteenth Festival in Cincinnati:

“Juneteenth Cincinnati has produced the annual Juneteenth Festival since 1988. It began in Daniel Drake Park in Kennedy Heights and moved in the early 1990’s to Eden Park in partnership with the Cincinnati Park Board.”

Learn more

https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-white-supremacy

“The system in which, either explicitly or implicitly, white people are societally favored to maintain inequities of wealth, power, and privilege. This includes, but is not limited to, political, economic, employment, legal, educational, and health care systems.”

https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-white-privilege

“White privilege is the reality that white people have unearned assets, opportunities, and advantages that are not afforded equally to Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and particularly in the United States, Black Americans.”

https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-white-christian-nationalism

“Nationalism has historically and systemically always meant and been white nationalism, deeply rooted in the Doctrine of Discovery, the idolatrous concept of Manifest Destiny, and the related systems that maintain white privilege. Christian nationalist beliefs alongside white racial identity creates the political vision that seeks hegemonic power for white people.”

https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-antiracism

“Anti-Racism is the interrupting and/or dismantling of racism. The interruption and/or dismantling must be tangible, meaningful, and powerful according to Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), as they are the direct targets of oppression and can know what works and what does not.”

Race:

https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-race

“Race is a social and political construct that creates and assigns people to different hierarchical racial groups and assigned racialized social identities.”

Racism:

https://www.r2hub.org/library/overt-and-covert-racism

“Most of us recognize and stand solidly against overt expressions of racism such as racial slurs, violence, cross-burnings by the Ku Klux Klan, and practices of blatant racial segregation and discrimination. But overt racism is only the tip of the iceberg. More often, racial discrimination is disguised and shows up in subtle ways (covert racism) such as implicit biases, microaggressions, and racially coded language. Often, people who say and do these things are unaware of the racism that informs them.”

Implicit Bias:

https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-implicit-bias

“Implicit Bias is the unconscious thinking that evaluates one group and its members to another group even when that thinking does not align with our stated beliefs, values, or commitments. The automatic and unintentional bias that we have affects our judgements, decisions, and behaviors toward the group and its members. The impact of any bias is felt by the group or its members regardless of if it was unintentional or not.”

Cultural Bias:

https://www.r2hub.org/library/what-is-cultural-bias

“Cultural bias occurs when an individual or group imposes their cultural values and norms on other groups. Cultural bias assumes that one’s own culture is superior to others.”

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