Freedom celebrated: Kankakee Juneteenth festival, parade punctuate celebrations

KANKAKEE – Parade participants and spectators christened the newly improved Hobbie Avenue on Saturday as the Juneteenth Freedom Festival weekend celebration began.

Starting in downtown Kankakee, the annual parade made its way to Pioneer Park via Court Street and Hobbie Avenue to kick off the annual festival, which celebrates the historical day of June 19, 1865, when the last Black slaves were emancipated at the end of the Civil War.

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Roseanna Autman, left, and Brandi Garner smile and wave as they make their way down Hobbie Avenue during the annual Kankakee Juneteenth Parade on Saturday, June 21, 2025. (Sam Yohnka for Shaw Local News N)

The celebratory date, now known as Juneteenth, came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, as places still under Confederate control did not implement the executive order.

More than 250,000 enslaved Black people were freed by executive decree when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, on June 19, 1865.

In total, more than 3.5 million enslaved Africans and African Americans were finally free.

The conclusion of the parade also marked the completion of a key development in east Kankakee as the much-anticipated reopening of Hobbie Avenue took place at the parade’s conclusion.

Residents of the neighborhood who have altered their travel since the closure in October 2023 can return to their normal commutes using one of the area’s main thoroughfares, which passes by Pioneer Park, where the festival was held.

The evening closed out with a fireworks show, which illuminated the sky with the colors of red and green. The colors are representative of the African Liberation Flag, designed in 1920 to tell the story of the unity among people from Africa, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Along with the color black, chosen to stand for Black people, the color red stands for struggle and sacrifice, and the color green stands for the natural wealth of the land of Africa, according to the museum’s website.

Another flag, the official Juneteenth Flag created by the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation, tells the story of Juneteenth with the colors red, white and blue as a reminder that slaves and their descendants were and are Americans.