Members of the Detroit Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School marching band perform at Homage to Black Excellence’s 2023 Juneteenth Celebration at Dearborn’s City Hall Artspace Lofts.
Homage to Black Excellence founder Julia Kapilango speaks during the Homage to Black Excellence’s 2023 Juneteenth Celebration at Dearborn’s City Hall Artspace Lofts.
By SUE SUCHYTA
Times-Herald Newspapers
DEARBORN – A panel discussion entitled, “Celebrating Juneteenth in Dearborn: Why It’s Important” is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. June 15 at the City Hall Artspace Lofts annex, 13615 Michigan Ave.
The event, co-sponsored by non-profit partners Littlefield Action for Social Justice and Homage to Black Excellence, hopes to encourage a sharing of insight, experience and varied viewpoints about what Juneteenth is and why it should be publicly celebrated as a community.
Julia Kapilango, founder of H2BE, will serve as a panelist, along with DeJuan Bland, lead organizer for Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength, and Deborah Fair, past president of the Michigan Black Presbyterian Caucus.
A question-and-answer session will follow the panel discussion, with the event ending with light refreshments made by local black vendors, including Toni Treats and Good Eats of Detroit.
Kapilango said Juneteenth is a time for awareness and mending.
“Juneteenth is a reckoning, repentance and a reparative opportunity for healing of everyone involved from generation to intergenerational,” she said. “Every race or ethnicity has a straight connection to Juneteenth, whether it’s publicly admitted or omitted.”
Lorelei Muniz, co-founder of Littlefield Action for Social Justice, said she felt enriched when she attended H2BE events in the past, and is excited to partner with them now during H2BE’s third Dearborn Juneteenth celebration.
“The panel format this year will center multi-generational voices of the Dearborn black experience,” she said. “To me, Juneteenth symbolizes the yearning for all people to live freely and prosper. We hope everyone comes out to learn and envision the joy of collective liberation and leave understanding that we can only get there together.”