The Maple Community Association (MCA) will host a Juneteenth Celebration today from noon until 6 p.m. in collaboration with the City of Takoma Park.
The event will be held at Takoma Park Middle School’s Lee Jordan Field and will be the first of its kind in the Takoma Park-Silver Spring area to be held on June 19.
Juneteenth seeks to commemorate the day on which all formerly enslaved people in the Confederate states were emancipated. The day was declared a national holiday by President Joe Biden in 2021, following protests in 2020 over the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and other Black Americans.
After noticing a lack of events in Takoma Park to celebrate Juneteenth, the MCA decided to plan their own. The MCA’s Juneteenth Celebration will include a wide array of activities and serve as a fantastic opportunity for various people in the community to spend time together on a key part of the country’s history.
“All the different boards of the city’s government, we’ve invited them out,” says MCA chief financial officer Terrell Thornton. “The recreation department, the police, the fire [department], they’re going to have information tables out there. We’re also going to have moon bounces and face painting for the kids, and food trucks and live bands.”
Thornton adds that speakers such as Maryland Senator Will Smith and former Takoma Park Mayor Kate Stewart, who currently serves as the Vice President of the Montgomery County Council, will address the celebration.
Though the plans for the Juneteenth Celebration are significant, the MCA is still in its infancy. Established just over a year ago, the MCA consists of individuals who were raised on Maple Avenue.
“We started the Maple Community Association last year on Father’s Day,” Thornton says. “We had all kind of been out of touch, but there were alot of deaths amongst our age group and we got tired of seeing each other at funerals, so we decided to do a big Father’s Day cookout last year, and we came up with the idea for the Maple Community Association.”
From there, they organized a Juneteenth celebration for the Takoma Park area.
Terry Seamens, a Takoma Park councilmember and part of the planning committee, highlights the importance of the holiday.
“It marks a significant moment in our nation’s history, and honors the end of slavery and recognizes the enduring fight for equality,” Seamens says.
Seamens also emphasized Takoma Park’s diversity, which Thornton credits with allowing them to get such a wide variety of vendors from within the community.
“What makes [Takoma Park] so great is that you have a million and one different communities all wrapped up in one, so we have a Hawaiian food truck, we have a barbeque truck, we have a vegetarian food truck. [sic] We did reach out in the community first. We have Ethan Spalding and the Trap Rock Band, which is right there from within Takoma Park, our private security is from a company right here in Takoma Park, our DJ, he’s from Takoma Park. We tried to keep it all in-house because we plan on it being a yearly thing, and it’s always a lot better just to go from home.”
According to Seamens, this all adds up as to why community members should attend the MCA’s Juneteenth Celebration: “It gives us a chance to reflect on the unity and spirit of our neighborhoods today, when we can come together and celebrate the progress that has been made through the years, and also to think about the steps that we can take for better understanding of each other going forward.”
Photo: © bulgn – stock.adobe.com
