Go See This: 2025 Juneteenth Black Arts Festival

James Vose is a local business owner, US Army Veteran, and father. He currently serves as a Pittsboro Town Commissioner and is committed to generating a vibrant cultural community through projects like our Go See This series. Vose Natural Stone is proud to be our 2024-2025 sponsor.

The arts are bringing joy this summer, we at the Chatham Arts Council invite you to Go See This…

Guest writer Corbie Hill penned this Go See This feature. Corbie is a writer, musician, runner, and Star Trek superfan who lives in Pittsboro. Listen to Corbie’s music here, and find him on Instagram here.

In June 2022, the poet Dasan Ahanu captivated the entire Juneteenth Black Arts Festival. Attendees froze in their tracks, stopped by words alone. Karinda Roebuck, executive director of Community Organizing for Racial Equity (CORE), is still in awe of the power of his performance. Yet there’s something else she’s noticed. Ahanu is one of a number of artists who have gone on to greater success after participating in the Juneteenth Black Arts Festival, which CORE organizes. Roebuck isn’t taking credit—that’s not how community works—but she can’t help but notice the phenomenon. Ahanu, for instance, spent the 2024-2025 school year as an artist-in-residence at NC State University. 

She would love to see something similar happen with a local artist.

“It’s just these simple little connections and how you can help tie these things together,” she says. “There are these brilliant artists that are being overlooked, and we have a lot of artists here in Chatham County.”

On the afternoon of June 21, the Juneteenth Black Arts Festival will fill the Chatham County Fairgrounds with performances, art, food, businesses and community spirit. Poet Josephus III is this year’s emcee—a familiar, comfortable role for the founder and host of Greensboro’s Poetry Café. New Orleans performer, recording artist, and vocal soloist Eddrindeá returns. The SSML Band, led by North Carolina-via-Austin musician Sir Smith, promises soulful positivity. 

Indeed, the Juneteenth Black Arts Festival has grown and found its focus since its 2018 debut at the Chatham Community Library. In 2021, the year Juneteenth became a national holiday, the local festival found its forever home at Chatham County Fairgrounds—the last Black-owned fairgrounds in the US, per CORE program director Michelle Wright. By then, Juneteenth celebrations were popping up elsewhere, so CORE decided to level up the festival into a dedicated, uplifting celebration of Black artists.

Even in hard times, Black art and Black joy are essential. Both are structural to the Juneteenth Black Arts Festival.

“Four years ago, I remember a journalist asking, ‘Why are you doing this event? There’s so much going on with police brutality, there’s so much going on with the fight for justice,’” says Wright. “We’re not the sum total of our trauma. Our joy doesn’t pause or recede or mute itself because we are also dealing with really violent things in our lives.” 

Outside of CORE, Wright is a therapist. She believes in the one-on-one therapeutic process but says that is not the only way for people to heal. People also heal in community and through their relationships with others, Wright continues. The Juneteenth Black Arts Festival, then, is a healing environment. Roebuck agrees. The festival is an opportunity to build deep relationships. It speaks volumes, she says, to see people show up across the American racial divide to celebrate a holiday that was only recently federally recognized. In short, Juneteenth marks the end of slavery in the United States.

This year, however, the Juneteenth Black Arts Festival organizers faced questions they haven’t before: Is Juneteenth still legal? Will my business face repercussions for sponsoring this? One question crops up every year: can white people come?

“Exclusionary behavior is not something that’s inherent among Black culture. My liberation does not have to be oppressive to anybody else,” says Karinda Roebuck, executive director at CORE. “If you are not free and I am not free, then nobody is free.”

“It’s a blessing and an honor to be in the space to welcome people to the event,” says Josephus III, this year’s emcee. “I’m happy they’re still having the event.”

Wright lights up when she talks about Josephus III’s work. Growing up in Bladen County in rural Eastern North Carolina, there were no open mics, she says. Then, in college at Winston-Salem State University, she first encountered the Poetry Café, which also travels to universities. Wright—as Roebuck puts it—is a dynamic poet herself, so she was quickly captivated by the Poetry Café experience.

“We all love. We all trip and fall. We all have triumphs. We all have failures. The stage gives opportunity for people just to talk about their life experiences,” Josephus III says. “The Poetry Café is a reminder that we’re all in this together.”

Since 2009, the Poetry Café has welcomed poets and performing artists—rappers, dancers, musicians—and has actively encouraged crowd participation. Everyone in the room is part of the show, Josephus III explains. There’s a live band, too (though Josephus III readily admits he cannot play or sing), which keeps the show moving.

“When we think about what we wanted from an emcee, he will bring that energy that he would bring to his own spaces of making this a welcoming, authentically Black experience,” says Wright.

While some things are different this year, some have not changed. The local community, whose lead CORE follows, absolutely wanted the festival. Wright and Roebuck never doubted the Juneteenth Black Arts Festival would happen.

“It may have just been a cookout for us, just getting together as Black community in Chatham County and welcoming everybody,” Roebuck says. “We’ll have a party no matter what it looks like.”

The Short Version
Who: Community Organizing for Racial Equity (CORE)
What: 2025 Juneteenth Black Arts Festival
When: Saturday, June 21. 4-8 p.m.
Where: Chatham County Fairgrounds, 191 Fairgrounds Rd., Pittsboro
Cost: Free
Parking: Accessible parking and grounds
For more information: https://corenc.org/juneteenth/