(Submitted photo)
Yellow Springs celebrates Juneteenth
- Published: July 16, 2025
On Thursday, June 19, the YS Juneteenth Committee collaborated with Antioch College’s Coretta Scott King Center for an event that honored the Juneteenth holiday and also commemorated the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s delivery of the Antioch College Commencement address on June 19, 1965.
Originally scheduled to take place outdoors on Antioch’s “horseshoe” lawn, the shifting weather forecast and saturated ground led the committee to move the activities indoors into the McGregor Hall classroom building and the Foundry Theater.
At 1 p.m., more than 60 people began the celebration by participating in a historic walk of “Coretta and Martin Luther King’s Yellow Springs.” Led by 365 Project youth tour guides Lila Crockett and Ezra Lydy, the group visited locations associated with Coretta Scott during her time as an Antioch student, and with the Kings as a couple when they returned to Yellow Springs for the commencement address, and when Coretta Scott King returned in 1982 to deliver the commencement address.
Upon the group’s return to campus, they joined with Yellow Springs residents and visitors from the Miami Valley and Columbus in the Peace and Justice Community Day from 2–5 p.m. in McGregor Hall, which included a banner-making workshop by Migiwa Orimo, an international hat identification game by Elaine and Keith Kresge of Yellow Springs Bahá’í Center, local and regional vendors and a fashion show featuring African designs presented by Sylvia Chess of African Utopia Boutique in Fairborn. DJ Basim Blunt provided music, videos and conversation in the McGregor 113 Lecture Hall. A historical Juneteenth exhibition, co-curated by Antioch visual arts professor Forest Bright and Antioch history professor Kevin McGruder, was available in the Herndon Gallery mezzanine space.
At 5 p.m., people moved to Antioch’s Foundry Theater for a Juneteenth program, where Antioch College President Jane Fernandes welcomed them, and emcee Philip O’Rourke guided participants through a program that included selections from the World House Choir; reading of narratives of formerly enslaved people about the arrival of freedom for them; and reading of the text of a plaque placed on campus by the Zeta Delta Lambda of Alpha Phi Alpha, a fraternity of which MLK was a member, to commemorate King’s 1965 speech, followed by rousing remarks from the Rev. Ray Caruthers, the chapter president. The program was followed by a Juneteenth dance party at the Foundry.
McGruder and Linda Cox co-chaired the Yellow Springs Juneteenth Planning Committee, and Queen Meccasia Zabriskie, director of the Coretta Scott King Center, represented Antioch in the planning process.
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