There was a large celebration commemorating Juneteenth in St. Paul’s historic Rondo neighborhood on Wednesday.

“Good music, good food, sunshine, people smiling,” said Pastor Joseph Webb IV with The Way Church in St. Paul. “This is the highlight of what St. Paul is.”

The national holiday recognizes the day enslaved African Americans in Texas learned of their freedom, years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Webb sees the holiday as a day to look to the future.

“We can highlight what has happened, what we overcame, and where we are now building relationships,” he said.

The gathering closed off the block around the Rondo Commemorative Plaza, which reminds the public that the neighborhood was divided by I-94 decades ago.

Reconnect Rondo engaged the crowd to educate them about the possibility of creating a land bridge to bring the neighborhood back together.

“It’s really important especially for us young people to really get that message out,” said Moises Soto Puente, an intern with Reconnect Rondo. “I think it’s really important to show when a community comes together, great things can happen.”

The highway construction displaced hundreds of homes and businesses.

That’s one of the harms city leaders hope to address through the St. Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission, which was established last year.

“We want to start restoring some of the businesses and homes and just ways of life that was lost in Rondo,” said Trahern Crews, the Commission chair.

He said the 11 members have met three times in total, starting in March. They’ve been working on bylaws and preparing to build a budget, which will need city approval.

According to Crews, the goal of the Commission is to address the racial wealth gap through short, medium and long-term recommendations.

“Hopefully, frequently we’ll be introducing reparatory justice policies and procedures,” said Crews.

Reparations will be for descendants of chattel slavery.

The 11 members of the Commission have a variety of backgrounds, including education, mental health and community organizing.

At its last meeting, the City Council honored Juneteenth and reaffirmed its support for the Commission in a resolution. It said the commission “will make significant progress toward repairing the damage caused by public and private systemic racism in the City of St. Paul, and will issue a report for consideration by the city, which will focus on but not be limited to strategies to grow equity and generational wealth, closing the gaps in home ownership, health care, education, employment and pay, and fairness within criminal justice among the American descendants of chattel slavery.”

Crews believes celebrating Juneteenth is an important aspect. 

“A big component about reparations and other reparatory justice initiatives is awareness and education,” he said.

At the Juneteenth celebration in Rondo, education was underway.

“A lot of young people, a lot of people in general don’t even know what Juneteenth is,” said Erica Lee, an intern with Reconnect Rondo. “I think that really needs to be spread and talked about more and so having events like this around the holiday is really important.”

Click here for KSTP’s full Rondo coverage.