This episode of What’s The Frequency is devoted to key events that are upcoming in June.
The Unity in the Community organization in Sioux City seeks to promote a better relationship between all people and law enforcement, by promoting peace, hope and prayer.
Unity in the Community holds several public events each year, and the upcoming one is in hosting an eighth-annual Block Party on June 8 at Cook Park in Sioux City from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Later in the month, a Siouxland author, Jim Tillman, will be among the people featured in Juneteenth events in Iowa.
Juneteenth is the notable day that seems to be growing in the public eye, after President Joe Biden signed a bill in June 2021 that made it the eleventh American federal holiday.
The holiday references June 19, 1865, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. The Juneteenth word references the date of the holiday, combining the words “June” and “nineteenth.”
Discussing these events are three guests, Margerite Reinert, a social worker academic and an official with Unity in the Community, Ike Rayford, who leads the Sioux City NAACP group, and Jim Tillman, who has written two books, including The Journal of African-American History: Sioux City, Iowa.
The guests will discuss the relationships of police and people of color, whether those are improving in the years after notable national news about impassioned conflicts.
Tillman will speak in a notable Juneteenth event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the African-American Museum of Iowa on June 18th. He will be joined by author Rachelle Chase, who has written an illuminating book on Buxton, Iowa.
Buxton was town that was created during the early 1900s coal mining boom, and Black people were the majority of people living in the town.
The museum website also summarizes, that, quote, “After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, owners in many isolated areas kept word from the people they had enslaved so that they would not flee. On June 19, 1865, some of the last enslaved people in America were freed when the news, at last, reached Confederate Galveston, Texas. Since that day, Juneteenth has been celebrated to honor the African Americans who built this nation.”
Click on the audio link above to hear the entire show.
*What's The Frequency, Episode 20
