The second day of the Juneteenth Atlanta fest kicked off under mostly sunny skies after Saturday’s disruptive downpours drenched festival goers and left swaths of the Piedmont Park grounds a bit muddy.
People walking along park paths lined with vendors serving Oxtail, pink and yellow watermelon, waist beads and sunglasses were there for more than the food or souvenirs.
And the event’s founder and director, Bob Johnson, seemed to know just about every face in the crowd. As he walked past vendors, he coordinated to be at the festival, he stopped a family passing by.
“This is what Juneteenth is all about, right here. This family,” Johnson said.
He referred to Walter and Muneeraa West, who brought their five children.
For them, the event has become a family tradition, and one that helped them connect with their history and community over the years.
“For me, this is important, I bring my kids every year,” Walter said.
He said earlier in the day, he and Muneeraa had been thinking back to their first Juneteenth Atlanta fest. Their oldest daughter, who is 11, was 1 when they first attended Juneteenth Atlanta fest. As the West family has grown, so has the festival.
“We didn’t even know what Juneteenth was, as far as a holiday,” he said about their first festival. “After that point, we began to do our family history.”
Walter has since found records of his family going back to 1864, he said, the year before Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, officially announcing the end of slavery according to the Emancipation Proclamation.
“It was a pretty deep experience for me, just searching. A sense of identity for me is major,” Walter said. “I think it’s important to know oneself, understand oneself and growing from there.”
Nearby, Ashley McKenzie, the mother of a 20-year-old Jaylin McKenzie, who was killed by police during a traffic stop in Memphis in 2022, stationed herself in the center of the festival area of the park, where she arranged a “Garden of Remembrance” to commemorate lives lost to systems of injustice.
Photos arranged around an elevated garden bed where several park paths converge, included a story about each person who had died. McKenzie also decorated the garden with art, flowers and yellow crime scene evidence markers.
“I don’t want people to think that because these lives are gone, that we always have to mourn,” McKenzie said. “We can celebrate.”
Still, her display brought some visitors who knew the victims to tears.
“We had some parents here crying, we had some men here crying yesterday,” McKenzie said.
Music could be heard from the garden and everywhere else in the park, mostly coming from the two large stages constructed down the field in the grass. The festival had also set up $25 thousand worth bouncy houses for kids to play on for free.
Prior to the event, Juneteenth Atlanta hosted the 5k Freedom Run, which started and ended at Piedmont Park. Johnson said more than 300 people participated.
Johnson kept busy during the event checking in on vendors and patrons as the crowds rolled in. One of his check-ins offered him a short break midday, when he visited Sha the Barber, who had set up a chair for people to get free haircuts.
“I’m providing services to the community today and yesterday,” Sha said. “I was just giving out free haircuts just to give back in honor of Juneteenth and most definitely Father’s Day.”
As Johnson sat in the chair getting his head touched up, he remarked on the meaning behind the festival he orchestrated.
“We are fighting for freedom, right now, today. And our main focus is on bringing our community together across all of the divisions that we have, whether that be race, gender, economics. We’re all just people out here. Why can’t we all just work together?”
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