Local Juneteenth Activities Expanding

Movies, Music, Food Featured In Three Events

Juneteenth celebrations in Rockbridge continue to extend and expand.

This Friday and Saturday evenings, Glasgow and Lexington will host communitywide festivities, with food, movies and music. And on the June 19 holiday itself, Washington and Lee’s DeLaney Center will host a free family and student screening of the “The Watsons Go To Birmingham, 1963.”

In Glasgow

The observances will begin in Glasgow this Friday at 6 p.m. at the James E. Thompson Sr. Community Center at 207 Catawba St.

The event will feature an illustrated slideshow, interspersed with audience questions and answers, by Rockbridge Historical Society Executive Director Eric Wilson. He will canvas a century of achievements and challenges facing local students, through decades of Jim Crow segregation, and the transitions of desegregation.

Profiles range from the Freedmen’s School in downtown Lexington, to the historically Black colleges and universities that local alumni would attend with awardwinning records. Still tied to community memory are the integration of area schools in the mid-1960s, and the closure of others, including Lylburn Downing High School (the first to award diplomas to African American students in Rockbridge, in 1944), and the very elementary school whose historic auditorium hosts this event, built to serve Black students in southern Rockbridge County in the 1950s-60s.

Like last year’s pairing of history, photography and film – exploring local and national histories related to “The Green Book” – Glasgow’s organizers have coupled this thematic focus on education with the relevant family friendly movie, Disney’s “Ruby Bridges.” At the age of 6, Ruby was chosen as the first student to integrate a formerly all-white elementary school in New Orleans. Free food from the kitchen and “movie concessions” will be available, as well as book displays, photo galleries, and local history and genealogy resources.

A special element this year will be the new opportunity for attendees to contribute and record their own personal and family stories, related to these broader cultural histories.

Before the film screening begins, W&L anthropology professor Alison Bell will provide an overview of the ambitious oral history project on school desegregation in western Virginia, pioneered by her late colleague, professor Ted DeLaney.

With Bell’s training in oral history methods, DeLaney had requested her input developing the program through which he had his students conduct 150 interviews with former students, teachers, administrators and parents in the western part of the state.

Before his death in 2020, DeLaney asked Bell to complete and publish the project, which she is co-editing with former W&L dean and civil rights attorney Tammi Simpson, titled “‘Come Through a Revolution.’” More specifically, Bell looks forward to engaging the audience on themes that emerged across the sweep of the oral history interviews, including those from Rockbridge. Many African American interviewees spoke about how they cherished their schools before desegregation: they lacked amenities that white students had (like laboratory equipment, or new books) but were deeply supported by their teachers and community members. A frequent point of discussion in DeLaney’s interviews centered on what was lost and what was gained through school desegregation.

After their presentations, Bell and Wilson welcome those who are interested to take the opportunity to record their own perspectives and memories about local education. A separate room will be available at the event to do so, or to arrange fuller interviews at a later date.

In Lexington

The annual Juneteenth celebration in Lexington on Saturday at Richardson Park will have a little something for everyone to enjoy.

Some of the activities for children will harken back in history to reflect the types of games that children may have been played in 1865. Organizers plan to have sack races, corn hole and horseshoes.

Susan Mead and others who have been instrumental in developing the local Sounder Community Circle project will have interactive sessions for children, focusing on the young son of the Sounder story. For the adults, this project will introduce the historical context and the Sounder connection to Rockbridge County.

The Lexington Fire and EMS Department will bring its trucks and equipment to educate and entertain children of all ages.

The Lexington Police Department will bring its new mounted unit to showcase the horses and they will provide their popular snow-cones.

The Gospel Creators of Staunton will kick off the Juneteenth event at 5 p.m. This is the first year Juneteenth in Lexington has included this genre of music, but there were requests for more varieties of music, which will offer a taste of everything to the wider community.

A specific focus that the Juneteenth committee has had for years has been to attract young adults to embrace this celebration, its history, and the great work involved in connecting the community, said a spokeswoman.

The 100 Proof GoGo Band of the Charlottesville area will be entertaining the crowd from 7 to 9 p.m. with GoGo, a genre of music originating in Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s, which has expanded most notably in Maryland and Virginia as well. GoGo is a type of funk music with a different flair using congas, cowbells, bongos and more.

Food trucks from the local and surrounding areas will provide a variety of food from barbecue to traditional soul food. The popular New Hope Church fish fry will return to satisfy its sellout crowds. There will be a strawberry dessert table, the Girl Scouts will sell cookies, and the popular Let Them Eat Cake entrepreneurs and Na Na’s Ice Cream will be among the vendors participating.

Several new vendors are expected, including Latonya Douglas with her jewelry, Diamond Diva Designs who specializes in novelties pens cups, and Kickin’ It Natural of Rocky Mount, who will sell natural hair care products, to name a few.

In addition, the local NAACP and 50 Ways Rockbridge have joined forces to provide a voter registration table, and representatives from the Irma Thompson Educators of Color will present information about the Career Switcher Program of the Virginia Department of Education.

The Lexington event is expected to run until 9 p.m. In case of inclement weather, it will be moved indoors to the Lylburn Downing Middle School gym and cafeteria.

At W&L

On Wednesday, June 19, at 5 p.m. in the Stackhouse Theater, the DeLaney Center at Washington and Lee University will contribute to the LexRockBV celebrations of Juneteenth by hosting a screening of the movie “The Watsons Go to Birmingham” (2013). Admission is free, and refreshments will be served.

Established in 2021 and named after W&L professor Theodore “Ted” DeLaney, the DeLaney Center serves the campus and the Lexington/ Rockbridge community by sponsoring events that explore Southern race relations, culture, and politics. The center’s Screen to Square Film Series plays a crucial role in carrying out its mission. The 2023-2024 season of the series features programs tied to the theme “Turning Points in the Civil Rights Movement,” and the Juneteenth event will round out this year’s explorations.

“The Watsons Go to Birmingham,” featuring Skai Jackson, Bryce Clyde Jenkins, Harrison Knight, Wood Harris, and Anika Noni Rose, and David Alan Grier, ponders how a family’s journey from Flint, Mich., to Birmingham, Ala., coincides with a dazzling set of national and local developments to clarify the opportunities and the challenges surrounding existence in a 1960s multiracial American society.

Based on the 1997 novel by Christopher Paul Curtis, this film raises questions about race, Southern-ness, and identity.

The award-winning, coming- of-age book is annually taught at Lylburn Downing Middle School, and is a popular choice for young readers in libraries. Students who have read the book – and those keen to preview – are particularly invited to join, and to help steer conversation after the film, from 7 to 8 p.m.

This year’s Screen to Square Film Series is made possible in part by a grant from Virginia Humanities.

Anyone with questions about the film can contact Sandy Sibold at DeLaneyCenter@ wlu.edu or (540) 4588027. To learn more about the DeLaney Center, visit https:// my.wlu.edu/delaney-center.