New Rochelle Juneteenth Interview with Linda Tarrant-Reid
Aaron:
How did Juneteenth in New Rochelle first come together?
Linda Tarrant-Reid:
Last year we went to the City of New Rochelle to ask them if they would partner with us to do a Juneteenth celebration. They thought it was a great idea. The year before, they had done a flag raising and a little ceremony in front of city hall, but in 2021, as, you know, Biden made it a federal holiday. We were already in the planning stages, by April, I’d say. We were kind of late, but we had a vision. We wanted it to be multi-venue. We wanted it to be multi-organizational. We wanted the message and the information about the history of Juneteenth to permeate the community. We did not want it to be just a Black history-thing only for the African American community. It was for the entire community. So with that said, we opened up the celebration to different organizations. The three last year were Ward Acres Community Garden, the Thomas Paine Cottage Museum, and the Paine Memorial building. All of them participated in Juneteenth. Ward Acres started at 9AM. They had presentations by the city historian about Juneteenth and the history of an African American cemetery, Carpenter Cemetery, in the north end of New Rochelle, where Ward Acres is located. They also had a storyteller, Thelma Thomas. She came up from New York City. Everybody said she was amazing. They also had a Tai Chi workshop. They had breakfast nibbles and a tour of their community garden. Everything was outdoors. It was beautiful. That was from 9 to 11AM.
From noon to 2PM, people made their way to city hall. We had the show mobile, which was great. We had it located on North Avenue facing the doors of city hall so that the lawn became a place where people could sit. They were sitting on the grass. They were standing under the trees. And they were watching the ceremony. The ceremony started with the Bulkandie African Dance Theater, which did a processional up the middle walkway to the city hall steps. Then they did a short performance. The Mayor and Andrea Stewart-Cousins came and raised the Juneteenth flag. We had different religious leaders come up and bless the event, a Muslim Imam, a Methodist minister, and a rabbi, all from New Rochelle.
Then we had a concert. We had Wayne Henderson, Rocky Middleton, Accent Dance of New York City. We had a jazz vocalist, Ron Jackson, and his daughter, Lucia Jackson. And then we had a hip-hop dancer, also part of the Accent Dance ensemble, Steven Vilsaint. Our actual event was from noon to 2PM, just two hours. We squeezed a lot in. We had some vendors as well, including Chef El-Amin. He’s famous. People come from all over to eat his fish.
Then from 3PM to 6PM, people went up to the Thomas Paine Cottage. A beautiful setting. The Cottage Museum is there. It was a family-oriented event. A lot of crafts. They had beautiful Juneteenth desserts like red velvet cookies and red punch. They had an art exhibit and a play reading that talked about the crossing of Washington. They had Capoeira from Brazil. They had a demonstration on the lawn and it was interactive so that the kids and young people could do some of the moves. They also organized self-guided tours. One of their board members dressed in colonial garb. They had a couple of people dressed in colonial garb, so that they could take pictures with the kids. And we videotaped everything. And the production company had a drone. Our video is incredible and we’re using that to raise funds for this year.
A:
What was the Lincoln Park Conservancy’s role in organizing Juneteenth in New Rochelle?
LTR:
We were the umbrella organization. We are the people who partnered with the city. We created our brand for the whole event. The name of our event last year was Passion and Perseverance. We even had tee shirts.
A:
You went all out.
LTR:
We had to, because our goal was to make sure that it was a big splash because it had never happened before in New Rochelle. The Lincoln Park Conservancy was established in 2020. Our mission is to document, celebrate, and educate the New Rochelle community and beyond to the African American history of the Lincoln Avenue corridor. We have a community garden that we started about 11 years ago called GROW! Lincoln Park Community Garden. The garden is on the site of the former Lincoln School, which was at the center of the first desegregation case filed and won in a northern city. New Rochelle, since the 1930s, had been gerrymandering the district, and allowing white parents to transfer their white children out of the Lincoln School as it became more and more African American. By the late fifties, Lincoln School was like 98% Black. And because of Brown vs. the Board of Education, 1954, that was illegal in the United States. After Brown, you could not have a public school that was exclusively Black or exclusively white. The parents won the case. The judge ordered the city school district to create a desegregation plan. Their plan was to tear down the school and bus the kids to all the white schools. No training. No transition. One day, the kids came to school and they put them on a bus. Today’s community garden is where the campus of the former Lincoln School once was. We have been highlighting this story and telling this story. In 2021 was actually the 60th anniversary of the Lincoln School decision. We had a commemoration that went from January 24th, 2021 until October 2021. We had different programs, most of it virtual. We had a screening of a documentary called Leveling Lincoln, where the Lincoln school students who are now in their seventies were interviewed and talk about how this impacted the families, the kids, and the community. We also conducted a virtual program with about twenty city, county, and state officials. They all came and gave words of wisdom and support for uncovering this history, promoting the history and educating the public. It was very successful. Then we did the Lincoln Student Speak. That was another virtual program, in which we had about seven former Lincoln students who came and told their stories. It was amazing. I can’t remember everything, we did so much. And then we topped it all off with Juneteenth.
Aaron:
What are your plans for Juneteenth in 2022?
LTR:
wWhat are we doing this year? What we’re doing this year is basically inviting everyone back that we had invited last year, because last year was so successful. We have about thirty representatives of about ten organizations. Some of the organizations this year include the New Rochelle Public Library. They’re going to be a really big hub. The NAACP, which was with us last year. They’re also going to be a really significant contributor. The Inter Religious Council of New Rochelle, which put together that group of religious leaders. They’ll do something similar this year. New Rochelle Council on the Arts. I’m a member of New Rochelle Council on the Arts and I’ve actually been the chairperson of the Rotunda Gallery for the last nine years. For Juneteenth last year, we had an exhibit there called ‘Juneteenth, A Narrative of Freedom.’ And because city hall was open that Saturday, June 19th, we were able to open those big, beautiful doors, so people were able to flow in and out. And they were also able to use the restrooms! This year we also have a group called Urban Legacy.
This year’s celebration is going to be spread out from Friday to Monday. We’ve gone from one day in three locations to June 17th to June 20th in six locations. We have the New Rochelle United Methodist Church. We have the Thomas Paine Cottage Museum and the Paine Memorial building again. The United Methodist Church will be screening Leveling Lincoln. Thomas Paine, will once again and be doing multiple activities. We’re also going to have a Back wealth expo at Lincoln Park, and I understand there’s going to be an outdoor screening of Leveling Lincoln there. So there’s going to be two opportunities to see Leveling Lincoln at various locations in the city. We’re going to have a trolley. We’ve already booked it. On Monday, the trolley will tour Black enclaves in the city of New Rochelle. Barbara Davis will be the person conducting the tour. Down at city hall, on the day of June 19th, we’re going to have a program that runs from 12PM to 5PM. We’re also going to have an African Village Marketplace and we’re going to have a jazz concert. The NAACP is going to do a historic presentation by a historian. It’s will probably be a lecture. We also have the Bracey Apartments where a lot of our lower income families and seniors live. There will be a gospel extravaganza at the site. The person who will manage that is Angela Davis-Farrish. She is the Executive Director of the New Rochelle Municipal Housing. She advocates for events being onsite so that it’s much more accessible.
A great thing about New Rochelle is that people speak up. They organize and really advocate for whatever their cause is. And that’s always been the case. I’ve been in New Rochelle, though not continually, since I was eight. My parents had businesses here on the Lincoln Avenue Corridor and my sister had a business. So we were here before the Lincoln Avenue Corridor became this wasteland as a result of the interstate 95-exit…this urban desecration with the Lincoln School being torn down. It looks like a desert. All the retail is gone. Now the only thing there is my garden.
A:
What are some of the projects that you are currently working on at the Lincoln Park Conservancy?
LTR:
One of the projects that I’m working on is called Grow! Eat!. I don’t know if you know this, but many municipalities received American Rescue Plan Act funding, and New Rochelle finally released a request for proposals from nonprofits to fit the categories. The categories include, sustainability, food insecurity. Our bailiwick is food insecurity. So we are proposing creating a food system to feed the food insecure in New Rochelle and will utilize fresh vegetables from nearby farms, and also growing some of it ourselves. We would like to get another space. I think it’s probably going to happen. I’m excited about that.
Another thing that happened recently is the City of New Rochelle received 10 million through the downtown revitalization initiative. They requested proposals for that. We submitted one for a history and culture center, the Lincoln Park Conservancy History and Culture Center. We did not get money for that but the city instead gave us a community benefit space in a new building downtown in the arts district. So we have an 1100 square foot space that has just been completed into a white box. It will be home to our programs, workshops, a kitchen, and a digital archive. We’re going cram everything in this little 1,100 square foot space.
A:
What does Juneteenth means to you personally?
LTR:
Oh my goodness. As a historian, I knew about Juneteenth because of the research that I did for my projects, my books. So Juneteenth was in my mind, but my heart, I’m not sure I really understood what it actually meant until I started digging deeply into the photographs. There are some incredible historic photographs of early Juneteenth celebrations across the United States, not just in Texas. We all know that Galveston Texas was the place that the union soldiers rode into in 1865 to let the enslaved in Galveston know that they were free and had been free since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. A lot of people in this country are taught that the Emancipation Proclamation freed the enslaved and they think that that means they freed all the enslaved, everywhere. But the reality is New York state started gradually freeing enslaved Africans starting in 1799 and they completed the abolition of slavery in 1827. Massachusetts and some of those New England states had freed enslaved people in the late 1700s. So really what the Emancipation Proclamation did, was because of the civil war, there were still some border states and Southern states that continued to have slaves after 1863. So when the war was fought and the union won, that meant the law of the land was no slavery. The south wasn’t willing to give that up. There was all this push to make sure that the Black people knew that they were no longer slaves. The joy that was felt when that news came…we called it Jubilee day, Freedom Day, Juneteenth.
And so the following year, 1866, was the first time that Juneteenth was celebrated and that was in Galveston, Texas. It was a party. It was a barbecue. It was people drinking red juice and eating all kinds of wonderful food. People saying their individual pieces, performance pieces. It’s a very cultural kind of celebration that Black people do all the time. We do it at our churches, whether it’s a Sunday picnic under the big tree that you see sometimes in those Southern paintings or photographs. Up in the north, we have all kinds of events that center around the church on Sunday, whether it’s dinner after the service, whether it’s Easter celebration with the kids dressing up in their little Easter outfits and their little leather shoes and socks with ruffles and their hair freshly done. And at all these events people stand up there and say their little piece. Usually it’s a Bible verse. Like “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” And that’s how you learn the Bible, at these ceremonial events. All of that connects together into this beautiful cultural quilt that for me, helps me center myself. It puts me in a place of comfort and stability to know about my history, no matter how painful it is. And it is painful. The fact that we endured. The fact that we built this country. We literally built wall street. We built the port down at the South Street Seaport, New York harbor. We had institutions in the late 1700s. Mutual aid societies. We had Black businesses. Fraunces Tavern. That guy was Black. Samuel Fraunces went with George Washington to Philadelphia, the first capital and became his steward in that White House. There’s lots and lots and lots of stories. The oystermen of Sandy Ground who came from Maryland, where they were oystermen, but were experiencing segregation and racism. They migrated to Sandy Ground. All of this we need to be teaching to our Black students and to Black people in general, so that they can understand the incredible legacy that we come from. And it carries on. Juneteenth is just one. There are so many. But Juneteenth is one that wasn’t well known. That’s why I’m happy that it’s now a federal, state, and local holiday. The fact that more people know about it, not just African Americans, but people from all different cultures, that is important.
A:
When was the first Juneteenth celebration that you participated in?
LTR:
It was in Peekskill in 2017 and I was the co-Grand Marshal. Jeannette Phillips was the one who nominated me to be the co-Grant Marshal. I was so honored. That was my first Juneteenth.
About ArtsWestchester
For more than 50 years, ArtsWestchester has been the community’s connection to the arts. Founded in 1965, it is the largest private not-for-profit arts council in New York State. Its mission is to create an equitable, inclusive, vibrant and sustainable Westchester County in which the arts are integral to and integrated into every facet of life. ArtsWestchester provides programs and services that enrich the lives of everyone in Westchester County. ArtsWestchester helps fund concerts, exhibitions and plays through grants; brings artists into schools and community centers; advocates for the arts; and builds audiences through diverse marketing initiatives. In 1998, ArtsWestchester purchased the nine-story neo-classical bank building at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue which has since been transformed into a multi-use resource for artists, cultural organizations and the community. A two-story gallery is located on the first floor of ArtsWestchester’s historic building on Mamaroneck Avenue. artsw.org