Nina Kavin
- Nov 6, 2019
- 3 min read

Evanston's first-ever Juneteenth parade will happen in 2020! Dance auditions announced.

Thanks to Kemone Hendricks and a growing group of interested Evanston community members, Evanston will hold its first Juneteenth parade next year.

Juneteenth falls on Friday, June 19, 2020. It's celebrated every year in honor of one of the final acts of emancipation of enslaved Africans and African Americans in the U.S. Juneteenth began in Galveston, Texas where on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers, led by Major Gen. Gordon Granger landed with news that the Civil War had ended and slaves were free.

The announcement came two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 that had ended slavery in the U.S. But, since that proclamation was made during the Civil War, it was ignored by Confederate states. It wasn't until the end of the war that the Executive Order was enforced in the South.

In preparation for the parade and festivities, dance choreographer Dandria 𝓓𝓪𝓷𝓲 𝓙𝓸 𝓦𝓲𝓵𝓵𝓲𝓪𝓶𝓼 and Kemone Hendricks will hold auditions for students aged eight to 16 to form a creative dance team that will perform during the parade and at another event that weekend.

Here are audition details from Kemone and Dandria.

*SAVE THE DATE*

Date: February 8th 2020 Location: TBD Time: TBD Dancers: Black/African American, Boys and Girls Age: 8 to 16 Song: “Wade in the Water”

More about the song:

"Wade in the Water" is one of the many songs (another famous one is "Follow the Drinking Gourd") associated with the Underground Railroad and enslaved people who were escaping enslavement. These songs contained explicit (though secret) instructions to fugitive slaves about how to avoid capture and which route to take to successfully make their way to freedom.

"Wade in the Water" was first formally published in 1901 by Fisk Jubilee Singers. According to many sources, Harriet Tubman used the song to tell men, women, and children who were escaping slavery to leave the trail and get into the water to make sure the slave-catchers' dogs wouldn't be able to sniff out their trail.

Without this song, many escaping people would have been caught on their way to reaching safety and freedom. This song remains one of the most significant encoded slave songs in history.