Top: KJ Smith with members of the nascent Powerhouse Performance Arts Studio, which currently operates out of Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School. Top: Elite Drill Squad, which is helmed by Ryshon Menafee, warms up on Bassett Street. Lucy Gellman Photos.
It was the drums, sailing over Bassett Street and down to Watson, that brought KJ Smith back to the parade he’d marched in as a teenager, long before he ever thought he’d be back at the Freddy Fixer as a mentor. Down the block, Amere Rivers heard them too, and swayed just a little from the sidewalk. At the mouth of the Farmington Canal Trail, college freshman Isaac Perry picked up his mallets, and gave the bass drum a heartbeat. Sound, rich and resonant, exploded around him.
By the time it reached Mary Jordan and her cousins over on West Hazel Street, the sidewalks looked as though they were dancing.
That vibe came to Dixwell Avenue Sunday afternoon, as a joyful, sun-soaked and jubilantly thunderous Elm City Freddy Fixer Parade stepped off at Bassett Street with generations of New Haveners cheering along. Held on Dixwell Avenue between Bassett Street and Lake Place, the parade captured a spirit of community and celebration, conjuring its historic neighborhood roots as it flowed from Newhallville to Dixwell, and then on to the lip of downtown.
Top: ECFFPC Members Krista Gibbs, Reese McLeod Brunson and Haley Vincent-Simpson. Middle: The Wilbur Cross High School Marching Band mid-warmup. Bottom: Models with Hamden-based designer Donald Carter (in the yellow and shades), whose first Freddy Fixer memory is marching with the West Hills Steppers in 1966. "It's an institution," he said before showing off the cropped jackets and feathered designs that he created specifically for this year's parade. Participating in the Freddy Fixer is an honor, he added, particularly because he and Diane Brown have been friends since they were eight years old.
With almost 90 marching units, it was a triumph for Reese McLeod Brunson, who took over as Elm City Freddy Fixer Parade Committee (ECFFPC) president last year. She takes the reins from Diane X. Brown and Petisia Adger, who have kept the parade going for roughly a decade (read more about past parades, meetings and parade committees here).
The Freddy Fixer was originally founded as a community clean-up in 1962, by New Haveners Frederick F. Smith, Edna Carnegie-Baker, and Charles Twyman. In the decades since, it has become a rich and storied neighborhood tradition, from day-long cookouts and family gatherings to outfits that are picked weeks ahead of time.
“People are excited,” McLeod Brunson said Sunday morning, as the sun peeked out from behind a low-hanging gray sky. Behind her, a check-in table beside Visels Pharmacy buzzed with activity. “It’s been a year in the making. I love seeing our community smiling. I’m happy and excited that we’re continuing this great legacy … we’re making the community proud.”
She added that the parade would not have been possible without parade coordinator Krista Gibbs and committee member Haley Vincent-Simpson, who helped with everything from last-minute parade day needs to a star-studded annual gala. Sunday, the three seemed as if they were everywhere at once, hustling down side streets, checking final details, and making time for hugs all before the parade began.
Top: Hamden Academy of Dance and Music's Diamond Furlow.
Around them, Newhallville came to life, as marching bands and drill teams warmed up on the surrounding streets, and souped-up cars growled and purred on Dixwell. Beside the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, the James Hillhouse High School Marching Band joined forces with the Blue Steel Drumline, the marching band of Southern Connecticut State University. For weeks, they’ve been practicing out on Bowen Field and in the parking lot at Southern, just off Crescent Street. At the end of May, Hillhouse marched in Washington, D.C., representing Connecticut in the nation’s Memorial Day Parade.
“It’s exciting and overwhelming all at the same time,” said band director Joshua Smith, a proud Hillhouse alum who marched in the Freddy Fixer as a musician long before he was an educator. “D.C. was wonderful. Our hard work paid off, and now we’re bringing it back home. A lot of our young people have many gifts, and we want to put it on display for the world to see.”
“It feels so good to be able to do something like this,” chimed in Zariah Dumas, a junior at Hillhouse who plays the saxophone, as the band struck up David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” Normally, Dumas is a little bit of a homebody: she doesn’t love going out. But when musical duty calls, she’s there. “It feels good to represent.”
Less than half a block away, the Wilbur Cross High School marching band ran through warmups, excited to pull out hits including Smash Mouth’s “All Star” and Aretha Franklin’s “Think.” As he watched the street, drum major Emmy Rosario soaked it all in, ready for his last Freddy Fixer before college. Since starting at Cross four years ago, he’s been proud to watch the Freddy roar back to life—and become part of its storied history in the process.
“I think this one is pretty fun,” Rosario said, with a nod to the rich HBCU traditions that suffuse the parade with Black pride each year. “You get turnt here.”
Top: Members of Magic Soul Academy, which is based in Hartford. Bottom: Friends Amayah Smith, Santana Brightly and Nevaé Brightly.
Every so often, cyclists passed through the sea of music and bodies, some pulling out their phones to record and dancing along as they steered carefully down the street. Up Watson Street, KJ Smith gathered members of Powerhouse Performance Arts Studio, an extracurricular arts program that has been operating out of Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School for just three weeks.
Inspired by Smith’s own love for the drums—he played at Hillhouse, then at Livingstone College—the studio currently offers drumline and majorette for New Haveners between 7 and 25 years old. For Smith, who grew up attending the Freddy and then marched in it for four years, “it means a lot” to be back, he said. He added that extracurriculars like drumline aren’t just fun: they keep kids out of trouble. That was true for him, and now he’s trying to pass it on.
“The Freddy Fixer has always been one of the biggest parades in New Haven,” he said. “I never thought I would be in this position” to shepherd the next generation of Black artists through the parade. “I want them to see the positivity.”
Back on Dixwell Avenue, things were beginning to heat up. At the front of a line for Hamden Academy of Dance and Music, co-captains Diamond Furlow and Dalayah Prescod took in the full weight of the afternoon, their last Freddy Fixer Parade before graduating from high school. The two, who are seniors at James Hillhouse High School and Metropolitan Business Academy respectively, have been dancing together since they were seven years old.
They’ve experienced the Freddy as attendees and as participants, letting it become part of what makes New Haven so special. At this point, they feel more like sisters than like peers. For both, Sunday felt bittersweet.
“We all grew up together,” Prescod said. When she dances in the Freddy, “I feel like a weight is lifted. I feel like I can always express myself. It’s a very sad but also a happy moment.”
Top: Alanna Destinee Herbert, William Bowens and Alisa Bowens-Mercado. Middle: Amelia Hamilton, Hannah Herring, and Amere Rivers of the Total Joy Are You (TJAY Foundation) with parent liaison Lyecia Jackson. Founded by Tracey Foskey in 2015, the nonprofit seeks to spread Autism awareness at the grassroots, with resources for parents who may otherwise feel isolated or not know where to begin. Jackson, a self-described Autism mom who is the foundation’s parent liaison, said she was honored to be representing the group at the Freddy, which she's attended since she was 12 years old.
Down the street, Miss Freddy Fixer herself was feeling more sweet than bitter. Perched on the back of a butter-yellow 1929 Mercedes-Benz Gazelle, Alanna Destinee Herbert took in the vibrant scene, excited to get one last parade in before she heads to college in the fall.
A senior at Common Ground High School, she’s marched in the parade since 2023 as a member of Puerto Ricans United, Inc. She has practice as a reigning monarch: she served as Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven last year.
“It feels great!” she said as she extended her arms to 6-year-old Zariah Dixon, who had happened upon the car and wanted to hug the real-life princess inside (“She looks so beautiful,” Zariah said emphatically before politely refusing a photo). In the last four years, Herbert has been working on accepting the full breadth of her Afro-Boricua identity, and said Sunday felt like a culmination of that journey.
Beside her, driver William Bowens got ready for his return to Dixwell Avenue, where he’s participated in the parade since 1985. His daughter, Westville salsera, beer brewer, and Renaissance woman Alisa Bowens-Mercado, gave him a little squeeze as the two reminisced.
“It’s surreal because it’s history,” Bowens-Mercado said. “This is like a reunion, because you get to see people that you have not seen for a whole year sometimes. It’s like a glorious homecoming. The community is this strong—there’s nothing like it.”
Top: Philip Modeen, a children's librarian at the Stetson Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library, with Stetson Branch Manager and longtime ECFFPC Organizer Diane Brown and Reese McLeod Brunson. Middle: Celeste Robinson Fulcher, Angelina Suggs and Harriet Batts. Bottom: Samantha Myers-Galberth of the salon Style 2000, which is currently on Whalley Avenue.
As they neared the afternoon’s start time, many of the participants also framed Sunday’s parade—and the strong display of community within it—as a powerful alternative to the violence that has in years past plagued the Freddy and the neighborhoods it passes through. To the unkind reputation Newhallville sometimes gets, some said, here was a response drenched in community support and neighborhood love.
Just steps away from Visels on Bassett Street, a dozen New Haveners put the final touches on a float for Survivors of Homicide, Inc., where a spray of balloons floated over the faces of New Haveners who have been lost to gun violence. Celeste Robinson Fulcher, whose daughter Erika was shot and killed in 2013, straightened her t-shirt, revealing a portrait of Erika.
Growing up in West Haven, the Freddy Fixer Parade “was a big deal to me,” Fulcher said, remembering years of marching with the West Haven Stylettes when she was just a kid. When she became a mom, she got to see it anew through her daughter’s eyes for years. “Erika was such a community person,” and loved coming out to the Freddy, Fulcher remembered.
Decades later, “it still means a big deal to me,” particularly as she spreads a message to stop the violence before more lives are senselessly lost. “We’re hoping that even one person will hear us and just put down the guns. As long as we’re out here, we’re letting people know—this group is an invitation that you don’t want to have.”
“It’s just being out here, all of us coming together,” said Harriet Batts, a fellow West Havener whose son Tyrone was a victim of gun violence during a trip to New York City in 2016.
Middle: Cailonni Haywood with 2-year-old Landin Haywood and 5-year-old Amayah Davis.
A shrill horn pierced the air back on Dixwell Avenue: it was almost time for the parade to begin. A mile down the avenue, judges had settled in on a city stage, ready to shout out marching units as they passed by one by one. Taking her place behind a fleet of motorcycles, McLeod Brunson looked around, smiling as the sidewalks filled with families. She raised her hand, as poised and graceful as a member of royalty, and waved as if to say it was go time.
As the parade began, New Havener Cailonni Haywood cheered marchers on from the sidewalk, promising her two-year-old, Landin, that the sound wouldn’t be as scary as he’d feared beforehand. Born and raised in New Haven, Haywood grew up with the Freddy, making it a point to go every year with members of her family. She missed it during the years she was away from home, as she served in the U.S. Navy overseas.
Now that she’s back, “it’s a tradition that gives us something to look forward to,” she said. As the street became a blur of blue and orange, she cheered on dancers from the Elite Drill Team, which last year won an award for its performance. Behind them, the street was awash in color. There were cowboy hats in every direction, some covered in purple sequins and as others greeted the street in traditional tan and brown suede.
Mary Jordan, Andrea Maybin and Willie Garvin. “We take care of our neighbors,” Garvin said.
Down the street, Mary Jordan had already started dancing; now she lifted her arms in the air and fully shimmied. There with cousins Andrea Maybin and Willie Garvin, she reminisced on the Freddy Fixer parades of her youth, when neighbors started prep with a clean up a week or two in advance (this year, McLeod Brunson brought that tradition back at the end of May, as longtime parade supporters and Dixwell boosters like ConnCAT pitched in to help).
In the decades since, she’s seen it change shape, assume new leadership, go on hiatus and return again. Every time it does, she’s there to welcome it back.
“We take care of our neighbors,” Garvin said.
Further down, the sidewalks teemed with people, from families who had set up picnic blankets and lawn chairs to congregants who had stayed after Sunday services, spilling out in front of the neighborhood’s historic churches. As they watched marchers pass by, 17-year-old friends Honesty Young and Tyreanna Conley cheered, linking arms as they stood hip to hip.
A student at West Haven High School, Young has been coming to the Freddy Fixer for years, including as a member of a drill team. But she was excited to return this year as Miss Triumphant Teen, a West Haven pageant based on self-confidence. A tiara glittered and bobbed atop her head as she spoke.
Top: Honesty Young and Tyreanna Conley. Middle: Members of the Dixwell/Newhallville Senior Center, which is in the Q House. Bottom: The youngest members of the Village Drill Team.
Beside her, Conley said she’d come out to both be in community and honor the memory of her dad, Jebrell Conley, who was killed by the police last year. When the float for Survivors of Homicide passed her, “that hit me hard,” she said. She was grateful to be there to spread awareness about his life, and to lean on friends (sometimes literally) as she cheered fellow New Haveners on.
“This is to show support for the community,” she said. “Today is all about the community and all that we have been through.”
For more from the Freddy Fixer Parade, view a full gallery of photos from I Love New Haven here.