Newtown Juneteenth Celebration celebrates progress

The experience of being at the annual Newtown Juneteenth Celebration meant a lot to Montrice Dawes of Ruskin, Florida. 

It offered her a chance to support her daughter Jada Shay and the cosmetics line she had launched, Jada Shay Cosmetics.

It also gave her the chance to help her 9-year-old grandson, Brylon Smith, understand more about history. 

She said she wanted “to try to give him the concept of how far we’ve come along — just to let him know that anything is possible.”

The Newtown Juneteenth Celebration is about supporting businesses in the community and recognizing the federal holiday of Juneteenth, said Gwendalyn Fleetwood of Culture Queen, which hosts the annual event.

Held on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way, the celebration brings together local vendors, mainly from the Black community, selling food and drink, apparel, artwork and more, to a backdrop of music. 

When Fleetwood established the event in 2020 during the pandemic, a time when many businesses were not open, she wanted to help the area rebuild as a community. 

However, since then, Juneteenth, which is on June 19, also became a national holiday. 

“We recognize that in 1776, the Fourth of July, most African slaves were still not free, so that’s why we call it the Black Independence Day,” she said.