Culture & Community | Downtown | Juneteenth | Arts & Culture | New Haven Green | Arts & Anti-racism
Top: JCGNH President Dr. Hanan Hameen Diagne, founder of Artsucation Academy Network, welcomes the elders. Bottom: Namumba Santos.
Namumba Santos eased into the sound of drum and ukelele, feeling the bright sun on his face. He lifted the mic to his mouth and began to sing, the lyrics slow as they rolled in. Ooooh-oh-oh-oh-oh / Be al-right, he sang, listening for the ukulele to hum its reply. “Can I get a quick ‘Umoja?’” Santos asked, and the audience called it back to him.
Across the grass, educator Jolyn Walker tucked into her lunch, keeping watch over an ancestor altar that had been up since midday. In front of her, a portrait of the late Alder Tom Ficklin seemed to radiate light. Behind him, the late Aleta Staton and Elaine Peters, both of whom loved Juneteenth, smiled brightly.
That scene came to the New Haven Green Saturday, as the Official Juneteenth Coalition of Greater New Haven (JCGNH) continued its week-long celebration of the now-federal holiday with an intergenerational “Juneteenth Village and Marketplace” in downtown New Haven. From a now-annual elder honoring to a Gen Z arts showcase, the event captured the spirit of the coalition, which has sought to build a generations-deep community through its events.
As in years past, it was a collaboration with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, which also joined the coalition for a flag raising, Juneteenth restaurant week and hip hop conference at Neighborhood Music School last week.
"When I came back to New Haven, it was to help with what the Bible calls 'The least of these,'" Pat Solomon said as she accepted her honor as an elder.
“This is the way it’s supposed to be,” said JCGNH member and Stetson Branch Manager Diane X. Brown, who can still remember when the celebration was a single tent on the New Haven Green. “The village starts with the unborn child and goes to the elders. This is amazing. It’s amazing.”
Juneteenth recognizes the emancipation of enslaved Black people in Galveston, Tex. on June 19, 1865, a full two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The date marked the formal end of chattel slavery in the United States. It did not mark the end of the economic enslavement and disenfranchisement of Black Americans, which continues today.
This year—four years after President Joe Biden signed a bill making it a federal holiday, and as the Trump Administration seeks to erase whole swaths of Black history—JCGNH members seized on the urgency of the moment, using the afternoon to both fête Black liberation and speak truth to power. As young performers rotated on and off the stage, several of the day’s vendors embraced that dual mission, from free haircuts to bright batik fabrics that danced and billowed in the wind.
Top: Gates with Harold Beaver: “I know I can’t be successful in what I’m doing if I can’t give it back to the community.” Bottom: Members of Powerhouse Performance Arts Studio.
As his razor hummed beneath a tent, barber Gary Gates got to work, with high praise for his first Juneteenth Village. The owner of Who’s Next, a barbershop on Dixwell Avenue, Gates said that he was excited to give back to the city that raised him. As a kid growing up in Newhallville, he loved art, especially fascinated by the craftsmanship that cutting hair entailed (“I wanted to carve people’s names in their heads!” he remembered with a smile).
By the 1990s, he was barbering professionally. By 2000, he had his own shop. But his love for New Haven goes beyond his business; when he doesn’t have a razor or fine-toothed comb in his hands, he’s leading a summer basketball league outside Lincoln-Bassett Neighborhood School and is active in the Newhallville Neighborhood Corporation.
So when neighborhood cheerleader Fred Christmas asked him to provide free haircuts at the event earlier this year, he didn’t miss a beat.
“It’s everything,” he said, unaware that he would be publicly honored for that work later in the afternoon. “I know I can’t be successful in what I’m doing if I can’t give it back to the community.”
“I needed it,” chimed in New Havener Harold Beaver, grateful and relaxed as he leaned back in Gates’ chair and soaked in the sun. Gates fitted a striped smock neatly around his neck.
“I think it’s beautiful,” Beaver added of the ceremony. “I was down here last year and just to be here another year is a blessing.”
Top: Jasmine Eaton. Bottom: Chance Davis, Tracey Massey, Trayonna Davis, Rahkiaya Davis, and Michela Davis. Massey's booth was called "Everything is Art."
A few tents away, artists Jasmine Eaton and Amayah Smith brought that beauty to their craft-based businesses, both of which start and end with a love for words. Eaton, a poet and spoken word artist who recently moved to New Haven from Bridgeport, runs Sankofa Stylez, a small business that specializes in crochet.
Years ago, she said, she picked up the practice after a friend taught her how to knit, and she realized that crochet was faster (“and it’s easier to fix a mistake,” she said matter-of-factly). Now, she loves how meditative and methodical it feels. “I find when I finish a project, the sense of satisfaction and pride is enormous,” she said.
Sharing the shade of side-by-side tents, Smith showed off the first four designs in her collection of holographic stickers, inspired by a desire to help boost literacy across New Haven (she’s still working on reading-focused items, she said). A year after performing during the Juneteenth Village, she was excited to be back as a vendor. Her grandmother’s Shitzu, Ruby, was there to keep her company as she chatted with passers-by.
“Junetenth means to me a chance to learn about our culture and history,” she said. “To not forget it—to honor it.”
Top: Members of Powerhouse Performance Arts Studio. Bottom: Bud Mench, Kim Futrell, Gary Gates, Julia Ficklin, Mike Piscitelli and Jolyn Walker.
Walker, meanwhile, offered up history to anyone who knew to ask for it. This month, she has spent time teaching the vibrant, ongoing history of Juneteenth across the state, including at the Stratford Public Library and Wisdom House in Litchfield. As a longtime dancer and educator, she’s started to realize that sharing that history isn’t just a hobby—it’s a responsibility.
“It’s time to wrap my mind and my heart around being an elder,” she said, before learning that the coalition planned to honor her for just that. When Walker teaches the history of Juneteenth, she talks about Ben Haith’s Juneteenth Flag, celebrates Juneteenth champion Opal Lee (at 98, Lee is often called the “grandmother of Juneteenth”), and does a call to action that brings a centuries-long history into the present.
This year, she said, she also offered her own dancing as a gift to those who had invited her to speak. “It’s time to give back,” she said.
On a taut purple tablecloth in front of her, JCGNH members had built a memorial display, with portraits of recent ancestors George Edwards, Aleta Staton, Elaine Peters (her beloved chihuahua, Coconut, made an appearance with attendee Marcey Lynn Jones), educator Jeffie Frazier and others. “It’s an honor, really,” Walker said of her perch.
Top: The New Haven Homeboys, led by Jesse Hameen, award $2,000 to The Shack for its work in the community. Bottom: Sandreen Fergusen, the owner of Cool Runnings, keeps the Jamaican food flowing as the afternoon heats up.
As the sound of young artists drifted across the grass, it seemed that their work—as bridge-builders, culture-bearers, justice fighters and beloved, transformational teachers—was very much alive in the next generation. As Santos began to sing, Jiwon Riley leaned into the ukelele, listening for a beat that came from the drums beside her. When he called for a communal "Umoja," he got it back in spades.
“My goal is to bring my community together through the arts,” said Santos, a rising junior at Temple University who runs the group Kidz Next Dorm on campus. Born and raised in Newhallville, he spent years skill-building through music, from freestyle poetry to a major in studio and live entertainment. It’s the arts, he said, that have taught him skills like patience and grace, as well as “how to deal with different people.”
“It’s been beautiful to see,” said JCGNH President Dr. Hanan Hameen Diagne, who later performed with her company, Keepers of the Culture, as she watched Santos take the stage. “The vision is coming true. This is for the city … the goal is to make Juneteenth in New Haven synonymous with Essencefest in New Orleans."
“This Today Is Very Momentous & Important”
Top: Julia Ficklin, accepting the award for her late husband, called the day as meaningful as it was emotional. Bottom: Solomon comes up from the crowd.
Nowhere was that full-circle moment clearer than in a ceremony honoring New Haven’s elders, including Beaver Hills Alder Tom Ficklin, who passed away suddenly last year. After a presentation from the New Haven Homeboys honoring West Hills Alder Honda Smith and The Shack, dancers and presenters moved out into the sea of attendees, clasping arms and holding hands as they brought up elders from the crowd.
On a table beside the stage, a fleet of ornate, painted wooden staffs and bright batik sashes waited patiently for their new owners. Hameen Diagne, her feet and arms electric, nearly took flight as she offered up a dance to welcome in the ceremony.
In total, elders included Ficklin, Hill stalwart Ann Boyd and her son, Howard (the first time a parent and child have both been recognized as elders, said JCGNH member Iman Hameen); City Finance Compliance & Assurance Monitor Patricia “Pat” Solomon; Deputy Cultural Affairs Director Kim Futrell; media personality George “Bud” Mench, State Rep. Robyn Porter; Gates, and Walker.
Top: Gary Gates and Marcel Lynn Jones. Bottom: JCGNH Organizer and Member Iman Hameen.
In addition, coalition members presented Brown with an official citation from the city, which she did not receive when she was honored 12 years ago. During her career, Hameen Diagne said, Brown has worked tirelessly to make the Stetson Branch Library into not just a welcoming community center, but a kind of Schomburg Center for New Haven.
The love goes both ways: “This is family,” Brown said as she accepted the citation from the stage, her eyes dancing.
Some, like Solomon and Futrell, have given decades of service to the city, including and especially in municipal government. Solomon, who started her career as the comptroller for the city of Tuskegee, Alabama at just 27, has become a steadfast champion of not just New Haven, but also the Dixwell neighborhood that she and so many others call home.
Futrell, meanwhile, has advocated for the coalition—and the arts in New Haven—for well over a decade, helping members find and identify city funding year after year after year. Thanks to that funding, the village has grown into a robust, days-long recognition of Juneteenth, with everything from concerts on the Green to a celebration of Black small business in New Haven.
“Kim made city funding possible,” Hameen Diagne said with a kind of reverence in her voice.
She brought that same sense of awe to her remarks to Julia Ficklin, who accepted the honor on behalf of her late husband, Tom, and may have laid bare the significance of the moment. Of all the recognitions that her husband received, she said, he would have been proudest of one from his community. As a beloved public servant and a fixture in the city’s cultural scene, he understood how profound of an honor that was.
“I’m feeling a little emotional, which is understandable,” she said, praising her husband’s role as a bridge-builder and tireless advocate for New Haven and its residents. “I think this, here today, would be one of the most appreciated, honorable and enjoyable for him to accept because it’s the small things … this today is very momentous and important.”
And indeed, Ficklin was part of the infrastructure that made Juneteenth on the Green possible. When Hameen Diagne arrived in New Haven from New York over a decade ago, Ficklin didn’t gatekeep. Instead, he invited her on the radio to talk about her work—and then connected her with other members of the media who could help her get Juneteenth off the ground.
Ficklin was like that in every area of his life, Mench added later in the ceremony, when it was his turn at the mic. Not infrequently, Ficklin would send email messages out late at night—or sometimes in the wee hours of the morning—asking how he could get the word out about something, or be helpful in his role as an alder. Before his passing last year, he was instrumental in helping get a Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hills Neighborhood Festival off the ground.
It’s just who he was, Julia Ficklin said. She beamed, accepting the staff and cloth in Ficklin’s honor. By the end of her remarks, both Hameen and Hameen Diagne were at her side, there to hold her through whatever she might need.
“I know he’s looking down, probably camera in hand, trying to take a picture of this,” she said.