'It's a family reunion': Elgin's Juneteenth celebration rooted in city's history
Two years to the day a bill was signed into law making Juneteenth a federal holiday, Elgin held its annual Juneteenth festival Saturday celebrating Black freedom, history, culture and heritage.
But it's something the city has been observing for decades — even centuries.
Gertrude McClain started the first local fest in 2001 as a fundraiser for youth scholarships at a time not many knew about, or had even heard of, Juneteenth.
She looked to the past for inspiration.
Her uncle, who died at age 99 last year, remembered attending celebrations in Mississippi to mark June 19, 1865, when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to take control of the state and ensure all enslaved people were freed — 2½ years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery.
McClain's uncle and people in his day didn't yet call it Juneteenth. Neither did the early Black community of Elgin.
Hundreds gathered annually in Lords Park for a big barbecue and celebration from 1876 to 1937, for what was called Emancipation Day, according to Elgin historian E.C. “Mike” Alft's book “Elgin's Black Heritage.”
Elizabeth Marston, director of the Elgin History Museum, said the first 110 Black residents of Elgin arrived via train in October 1862 and settled in the Fremont Street area.
McClain admits she could have called her first scholarship fundraiser in 2001 anything, but she kept thinking of the earlier freedom celebrations in the Black community.
“This is the 1900s. Everybody came dressed in their Sunday's best,” McClain said. “Ice cream and all that stuff. What really stuck out and made me really want to continue with Juneteenth is when they said that, even back then, people were coming to the festival with hand-drawn or printed pictures of their relatives,” McClain said. “And they had a special board that they put them on that said, ‘My name is so and so, I'm from this area, I'm looking for my brother George.' ... That really rang a bell in my heart.
“A lot of people think Juneteenth is just about celebrating because the slaves were free. But it's a little bit more than that. We don't discriminate at our festival. ... We open our festival up to everybody. It's a family reunion.”
The fest, originally near city hall, started small but grew until the recession hit and it was combined with Elgin's iFest. There were plans to bring back the Juneteenth fest on its own in 2020, but the pandemic delayed a full return until last year.
McClain, founder of the African American Coalition of Kane County, moved to Houston, Texas, in 2018. But she was back in Elgin Saturday afternoon to soak up the sunshine, sounds of R&B and gospel music, and smells of barbecue cooking on grills at the city's Festival Park.
“This year, I can honestly say with the vendors and the music and everything, it's the biggest year we've ever had since it started,” she said.