Juneteenth celebration coming next month

May 14-MOSES LAKE - The Martin Luther King Jr. Committee of Moses Lake will host a Juneteenth celebration next month at McCosh Park, with live entertainment, an informational question-and-answer and lots of food.

"This year we're going to have foot-long and regular-size corn dogs, cheese curd and ... popsicles," said committee member Sherise Scott.

Strawberry pop will be served as well, Scott said, because it has a special significance to Juneteenth that will be explained at the celebration.

The Dreamers in Action, who are the youth segment of the committee, will perform a dance to a song that has great meaning to them, Scott said. For the little ones, there will be face painting as well.

The history and significance of the holiday will be the topic of a presentation by the event's organizers, with an opportunity afterward for the audience to ask - and answer - questions.

"We will go over the history of Juneteenth, the reason we celebrate it, when we started celebrating it and why that date is symbolic to emancipation," Scott said. "(Then) we want to do a question-and-answer segment with the audience where we give out gifts in response to correct answers."

For music, there will be a DJ spinning tunes, Scott said, and also a performance by blues singer Lady A. Lady A, according to her website, is based in Seattle and combines original music with classics in a style influenced by Denise LaSalle, Mahalia Jackson and Alberta Hunter. She was named Best Blues Vocalist and Best Performer by the Washington Blues Society in 2020 and 2021, took home Best Female Vocalist in 2022 and won the Patti Allen Award for Best Blues Performer of the Year in 2025.

Juneteenth has been a national holiday since 2021, but its roots go back to the end of the Civil War and the eradication of slavery in the U.S., according to the Congressional Research Service. It commemorates June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Texas learned that they had been legally freed two and a half years earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation, despite their enslavers' efforts to keep that knowledge from them.

This will be the fifth Juneteenth celebration put on by the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee in Moses Lake, according to Columbia Basin Herald archives. The committee also organizes a celebration and march every January on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

"We're trying to ... get the community involved and knowledgeable about us, and continue to push Martin Luther King's dream forward," Scott said.

Juneteenth

4-7:30 p.m. June 19

McCosh Park

401 W. Fourth Ave.

Moses Lake

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