PROVINCETOWN — More than 100 people gathered under clear skies at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House for the annual Juneteenth cookout on Thursday — an afternoon that served up burgers and potato salad but also music, memories, and reminders of why the day matters.
The event opened with a Yoruba-inspired ritual where people were invited to call the last name of ancestors they wished to honor as feathers, dirt, and water were laid upon an altar.
Solemnity soon gave way to the voices of Broadway performer James Jackson Jr. and Provincetown performer Qya Cristál, who led the audience in singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — the Black national anthem. The communal rendition reflected the feeling on the green that day, which event volunteer and UUMH Clerk Pat Medina described as “an outpouring of love and community.”
“Provincetown is my extended family,” said Medina, describing what brought her to the party. “Plus, it’s a lot of fun.”
Smith College Professor of Africana Studies Crystal Fleming spoke about Black freedom, queerness, and determination.
“We are living in challenging times, but baby, it has always been a challenging time for people like us,” Fleming said. “If our ancestors could live through the Middle Passage and survive the most oppressive apparatus of state violence ever conceived, then we, too, must be determined to build on their legacies of resilience.”
Lamb Rahming — co-founder of Frolic, a social organization for queer and trans people of color — encouraged audience members not to give in to “social justice fatigue,” which he described as the exhaustion that comes from speaking out again and again without feeling heard. Rahming told the crowd to “preach to the choir, so that they might sing.”
Georgia Congressional candidate Everton Blair was also there. He called Juneteenth a day of “commemorative freedom and also a day of surprising intrigue.” Blair told the crowd that freedoms have never truly been free: “They require us to work,” he said. “If you think about freedom in this moment,” he added, “also think about the work that we still have yet to achieve.”
Drag performances by local artists Lakia Mondale and Devy Kendall were interspersed with the event’s speeches.
Elspeth Slayter, who served on the Juneteenth planning commission, said that, although planning for Thursday’s cookout started back in October, recent moves from the White House made the committee “dig in deeper.”
“We were out barking last night at the firehouse,” Slayter said, “playing some good music and handing out palm cards and having fun, just trying to create a very positive vibe.”
