The Juneteenth in the Dotte parade got in motion just a bit after 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, Jun. 13, with marchers gathering at John Garland Park, ready to head south on 5th Street toward downtown.

Just a few minutes into the march, a sudden, intense downpour sent floats, performers, and spectators scattering for cover. The rain lasted only a few minutes, and the parade picked up where it left off and rolled on, just a little soggier, passing the reviewing stand at John’s Java and Jazz at Troup Ave.

The parade’s grand marshal was Elnora Jefferson, a northeast KCK native and Sumner High School graduate. Jefferson has long worked to revitalize northeast KC and develop the many vacant lots left behind through decay, work that has been recognized locally and nationally. She has also been a force at the Unified Government to include residents’ voices in redevelopment decisions.

Free men who free others

For Lamonte McIntyre, the holiday’s theme of emancipation is personal. “Freedom means just being able to wake up every day and choose what you want to do and be happy and at peace,” he said.

“When you’ve been wrongly convicted and been in prison for a long time, you tend to see life for what it is, tend to take things slow. So we see life from a different perspective than everybody else,” McIntyre said. He described the group’s mission plainly: “We help other innocent people get out of prison, then we help them once they get home. That’s our main mission.”

McIntyre’s exoneration left a mark on local justice. His case prompted the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s office to create the state’s first conviction integrity unit, and his advocacy helped pass Kansas’s first wrongful-conviction compensation law in 2018.

Burton served 25 years in Missouri before his release, and he described a system slow to own its errors. “It’s hard for judges and prosecutors sometime to admit that they made mistakes, or they made what I call calculated errors,” he said.

He said freed men often find little waiting for them. “I went and asked for some help, and the people who told me reentry program said, ‘We can’t help you. We only help guilty people. We don’t help innocent people,'” Burton said.

Burton credited Centurion, a New Jersey-based advocacy organization, for helping win their freedom at a cost of roughly $350 thousand per person. Miracle of Innocence now with partners Centurion, along with conviction integrity units and innocence projects across the country. He named several cases the group is pressing, including those of Byron Case, Larry DeClue, and Ahmon Mann, and urged the public to reach out through the group’s website.

Teaching the next generation

Grant Elementary third-grade teacher Bri Nelson marched in the parade along with her Sigma Gamma Rho sorority sisters. The school sits at 4th Street and Troup, near the end of the parade route and just north of the Gateway Plaza housing development.

“I think Juneteenth represents a lot of culture, a lot of black history. It allows us to come together as a community and to really celebrate each other’s accomplishments,” she said.

Nelson helps lead cultural celebrations at Grant, where staff work to make sure “students feel seen, that their cultures are represented.” This year the school brought in two steppers, to teach the traditional African American dance style to students who might not know that part of the culture. Her sorority and her school want to widen that circle. “We would like to give students and other people, citizens, more opportunities to be involved with the community so that they can come out and celebrate more with us as well,” Nelson said.

Grant Elementary itself is a piece of legacy on display. The school was renamed in 1923 for Bishop Abram Grant, an African Methodist Episcopal Church leader who was born a slave in Florida and later made his home in KCK. Sigma Gamma Rho, one of the leading black sororities, was founded by seven teachers in 1922 under the slogan “Greater Service, Greater Progress.”

Freedom and the fight ahead

Erik Murray, Wyandotte County developer and candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, walked the route and afterwards framed the day around celebration and struggle.

“It means freedom, right? At this moment in time, when we know that our voting rights and our civil rights are under attack again, we’ve got to make sure that we continue to keep this movement alive,” Murray said.

“The rain couldn’t stop us, right? The rain tried, but you know, it cleared right up and we kept going,” he said.

Murray pointed to KCK’s prominence on the path to freedom, crediting the preservation efforts at Quindaro and the Quindaro Community Center with helping to grow the local Juneteenth celebration. “This is the free state, and we know that as our ancestors came across that Missouri River and found freedom with John Brown and the abolitionists there,” he said.

Murray saw both promise and neglect as he walked along 5th Street. “We have talented young children who’ve gone all over this country and done great things, and when we come back here to see the neighborhoods still look like they did in 1950 and 1960, we know what economic segregation has looked like,” he said. Disinvested communities like Wyandotte County, he said, need leaders “that are going to go and fight for our community to bring those resources back home.”

The evening moves to Memorial Hall

The celebration continues Saturday evening, though not as organizers first planned. Citing the potential for severe weather, organizers moved the free evening event indoors from Kaw Point Park indoors to Memorial Hall where it will run from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The evening event is free and open to all.

There will be games, a special kids zone, local vendors, drill team performances, free hot dogs, and food trucks. Live entertainment includes comedian B. Rich; Grammy-nominated singer LeVelle; and John Hudson, Bri Davis, and J. Foster, featuring vocalist “The Songbird” Robin Gant.

Images from the Juneteenth in the Dotte parade