‘Framed in American history:’ Annual Quad City Juneteenth festival held June 14

Get ready to honor the oldest-known celebration in the U.S. commemorating the end of slavery, by attending Saturday's Quad City Juneteenth festival.

BY CLEAH PHILLIPS

Photo courtesy of Friends of MLK Facebook.

Hosted by The Friends of MLK, Inc. of Davenport, the annual Juneteenth celebration will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 14, at 400 Beiderbecke Dr, LeClaire Park, in Davenport.

In preparation for this event, The Friends of MLK have maintained their mission to provide fun, judgement free and equitable education surrounding this historic and momentous holiday.

Chief Executive Officer Ryan Saddler, pointed to two catalysts of this celebration. The first surrounds the narrative of Juneteenth and its understanding.

“We still have a narrative of something like this being discriminatory or anti-white, which is the narrative of Black history being taught in schools and in books. So we’ve always as an organization, since our inception, and even the premise of why we were created at The Friends of MLK, worked to really tell American history but from a lens that has been minimized or not told, and that is the lens of the minority.”

“This is all framed in American history. This is purely an understanding. If we get our roots and our grounding correct, then maybe just maybe, we might see that our brothers and our sisters who don’t look like us because of pigmentation, are no different than us. That’s the premise of this,” Saddler said.

Second, he pointed to the impact of representation for community youth.

“We know that when a kid sees someone who looks like them in their learning, in their educational journey, they tend to engage in a deeper way. So the absence of Blackness in our educational journey has led us to this certain fight of inferiority,” he said.

Saddler said combining the elements of having iconic figures in education, individuals in communities that children see who are alive today, bringing alive credited history in the Quad Cities and its impact, will culminate in children of color being able to truly visualize the foundations of community and learn better.

“They might do better in science too, not just that social studies course,” he said.

According to Saddler, when holding a virtual festival in 2020 due to the pandemic, the fresh national tribulations following the death of George Floyd, sparked an interest and an awareness for the holiday. Since then, the support has continued to increase year by year, with last year’s number of attendees estimating around 3,000.

New to the festival this year will be the addition of a Black cowboy experience consisting of bullhorns and lassos, as well as the anticipated return of a local boxing club and ring set-up.

At the history tent, there will be a new Juneteenth presentation running through the history and local history of the holiday, and also pieces read by both local author Shellie Moore Guy and Saddler about U.S. colored troops during the Civil War.

Festival Coordinator Tracy Singleton, said with so many events, performances and close to 60 combined vendors and resources, “There’s something for everyone.”

The Bandshell will be lively with performances ranging from the National Anthem and the Black National Anthem sung by brother and sister, CJ and Baylee Parker, rap and hip-hop by eight artists from the Phil Iowa Music Group, gospel rap performances, Mark Barnes’ hip-hop aerobics class, a line dancing class and the Royal Drama Dance Team.

In addition, the Ms. Juneteenth 2025 will be announced, and there will be a table-top area for Connect 4, card games, chess and checkers, a TikTok party zone with a photo booth, blow up dance club and someone teaching viral TikTok dances, a kids zone and vendors like Braggs Barbecue and Sweet Shardae Shaved Ice.

The history tent will stand at the festival to detail the national history of this holiday and even educate about Davenport’s very own direct connection with the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court case via the death of Dred Scott’s owner John Emmerson, who was living, died and is still buried in Davenport.

In the end, Saddler says that each year the energy is positive and joyous. There is no negativity, and being able to take control of collective empowerment and encouragement is profound, he said.

“Our stance has never been to fight systems but to take control of what we can take control of, and if we can be the research disseminator of these stories, then let us. We’ll be that,” he said.

To find out more about The Friends of MLK, Inc., their mission, the 2025 Quad City Juneteenth Festival and donations, visit their website here and find their Facebook here.

The Juneteenth holiday is June 19.

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