People dance together
People dance together - Johns Hopkins and the Baltimore community commemorated Juneteenth with an event on the Beach featuring music, dance, and spoken word performances In a corner of the Beach last Friday, the talking drums of performance group Urban Foli carved a space for reflection and celebration in the shaded heat filled with voices and movement. "They denied us the drum, so we became the drum," dance artist Amaniyea Payne chanted to the crowd in a prelude to a traditional Ring Shout. She was joined in the spiritual dance by members of the Baltimore and Johns Hopkins communities, who had come to celebrate Juneteenth at Homewood: Expressions of Freedom, hosted by the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences in partnership with the Homewood Museum and the Center for Africana Studies. People dance and play drums - After Payne's Ring Shout praise dancing, spoken word artists from DewMore Baltimore, Black Rose and Jay Le Ray, performed reflective pieces about Black girls' journeys and freedom. "Being part of the community here was so much fun," Black Rose, who had never been to a Juneteenth celebration before, said later. Juneteenth represents healing both for those historically oppressed and for the oppressors, said community organizer Nneka N'namdi, the founder of Fight Blight Baltimore. Earlier, N'namdi had delivered the celebration's keynote address-"A Commemoration of Juneteenth"-which described the history of the first Juneteenth and connected it to Baltimore's African American history of freedom fighting.
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