By Katie Vaughn | Photography by Hillary Schave
As a child in Milwaukee, Annie Weatherby-Flowers always looked Juneteenth event, she would sit with friends and watch a parade go down the street, then join others in roasting corn, listening to music and celebrating the African American community.
When Weatherby-Flowers moved to Madison in 1989, she recognized a need for the connections she experienced in her youth.
“I noticed the Black community was kind of segregated — economically, socially and educationally, we were divided,” she recalls. “I said, ‘Madison needs a Juneteenth, a time when we’re collectively together.’”
Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and freed the final group of enslaved Black Americans — nearly two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Juneteenth celebrations began the next year in Texas and then spread across the country, becoming an official Wisconsin state holiday in 2009 and federal holiday in 2021.
With a background as a community organizer, Weatherby-Flowers launched Madison’s Juneteenth with Mona Adams Winston in 1990 in Penn Park.
“We were able to connect folks based on ancestry and commonalities,” she says. “When people were together, they didn’t see barriers; they saw the collective and common good.”
Since then, Madison’s Juneteenth has grown — peaking at nearly 15,000 people in the early 2000s and making USA Today’s list of the top 10 Juneteenths in the nation in 2006 — but it has always been a community-focused, family-friendly, alcohol- and drug-free event combining history, education and entertainment.
In 2006, Weatherby-Flowers and Winston founded the Kujichagulia Madison Center for Self Determination as a permanent host of the city’s Juneteenth, as well as to provide educational and cultural programming for the Black community. The nonprofit’s name honors the Kwanzaa principle of self-determination.
“Our goals and objectives are to assist our community to become more effective in terms of how they live and how they advocate for themselves and how they take care of themselves mentally, physically and spiritually,” says Weatherby-Flowers, who also serves as the education and outreach coordinator at the Madison Public Library.
Over the years, Weatherby-Flowers has witnessed a growth in local Black organizations, and she has invited them to help plan and have a presence at Juneteenth. Each year, tents represent local churches, nonprofits, schools and businesses, showcasing history, heritage, food, music, art and more from across the African diaspora. It’s this sense of inclusion that elevates Madison’s Juneteenth, says Weatherby-Flowers, and she hopes all attendees leave with new knowledge.
“What makes it special for me is watching young people have an ‘aha’ moment and really know that this is about more than slavery; it’s about resilience and self-determination and family and resistance and historically how we look at our past,” she says.
This year, Weatherby-Flowers is transitioning out of the hands-on planning of Juneteenth. But she’s confident in the team that will carry the event forward and proud of what she’s accomplished throughout the past 36 years.
“It’s been a journey,” she says, “but a journey well-traveled.”
