Dancing and double-dutch: the Twin Cities celebrate Juneteenth
Members of Rondo Double Dutch show how to jump rope during the Soul of the Southside festival for Juneteenth at Hook and Ladder Theater in Minneapolis Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Photo by Nicole Neri for the Minnesota Reformer)
The 160th anniversary of Juneteenth was commemorated Thursday across the Twin Cities with block parties, festivals, concerts and history walks.
Juneteenth recognizes the day that enslaved people gained freedom in Texas more than two years after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation. On June 19, 1865, Union troops in Galveston Bay, Texas announced the decree that liberated more than 250,000 enslaved people.
The Rondo Center of Diverse Expressions held its fifth annual Juneteenth celebration in St. Paul’s historically Black neighborhood of Rondo. More than 600 Black families lost their homes and many more were displaced during the construction of Interstate 94 in the 1950s and 1960s. The neighborhood has persevered, however, and one of its own is mayor.
“My name is Melvin Carter. My job is ‘mayor,’ but my identity is Rondo. Because I’m from this neighborhood. This is the neighborhood that raised me,” Carter said during his remarks. “I remember driving on I-94, my dad would say, ‘You’re in my bedroom right now.’”
Carter also spoke about the evolution of Rondo and Juneteenth. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021 and a Minnesota state holiday in 2023. The celebration took place at an intersection of Rondo Avenue, which was renamed from Concordia Avenue in 2024.
At the Soul of the Southside Juneteenth Festival, attendees shopped at Black-owned businesses, listened to musical performances, and learned Black history at a TPT PBS screening tucked into the back of Moon Palace Books.
The first iteration of the festival in 2022 celebrated the opening of The Legacy Building, a Black-led creative space started by hip-hop pair iLLism. The tradition of hip hop remains alive at the celebration.
The Minnesota Hip Hop Collective performed.
“We make it a point to come out to Juneteenth celebration every year,” Averie Mitchell-Brown, a member of the collective, told the Reformer.
Mitchell-Brown spoke about how Juneteenth has grown over time.
“One thing that I’ve noticed is that Juneteenth has just gotten to evolve into just seeing a lot more Black-owned businesses. Which is cool because way back, we couldn’t find it. We had to pick and choose, or just look around on social media and really search for Black-owned businesses, especially locally-owned,” Mitchell-Brown said.
