Evanston Present News Today

When Kemone Hendricks started Evanston’s annual Juneteenth parade in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrations included just a car parade and online events. Four years later, the founder and executive director of Evanston Present and Future said the fifth annual celebration will feature floats, music and dance performances at the parade, as well as various...

Evanston Present and Future will hold the “Capturing Moments: Teen Parent Photo Session” event on March 9. At the one-day free event, young parents will be able to take family portraits with their children. Kemone Hendricks, the founder and executive director of Evanston Present and Future, said she wanted to organize an event for teen...

After lying dormant for two years, nonprofit Evanston Present and Future’s Juneteenth Creative Dance Team Program is back in full force, with auditions beginning in February for Black and Brown residents in Evanston, according to the nonprofit’s Facebook page.  Kemone Hendricks founded Evanston Present and Future and its Juneteenth Creative Dance Team Program in partnership...

Content Warning: This story contains mentions of sexual assault. Poet and dancer Sunshine Lombré shared a spoken word piece about reproductive rights and sexual violence to a crowd of listeners dressed in pink at Evanston’s Pro-Choice Rally and March on Sunday. Lombré emphasized that most cases of sexual assault go unreported, which contributes to minimized...

Hecky’s Barbecue, an Evanston institution for nearly 40 years, won the Chicago Tribune’s Readers’ Choice Award for the best Chicago-style BBQ in April. The award is the first the restaurant has received since its founder, Hecky Powell, died in 2020, according to Cheryl Judice, Powell’s wife and the current president and owner of Hecky’s. Judice...

  Evanston partnered with Evanston Present and Future to host Juneteenth celebrations Saturday. Residents marched in a morning parade from Robert Crown Community Center to Ingraham Park, where they celebrated with live music, artistic activities and booths from local businesses. This year’s festivities marked the third year Evanston has hosted a Juneteenth parade. Metropolitan Water...

Fort Worth, Texas, April 25, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The annual Juneteenth celebration in Fort Worth, Texas powered by the non-profit Unity Unlimited,...

Kemone Hendricks, founder of Evanston Present and Future is organizing Evanston’s first in-person Juneteenth Parade, which she said will bring the community together to celebrate “America’s real freedom day.” Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery, honoring the date federal troops arrived in Texas on June 19, 1865 and brought news of freedom to America’s remaining slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued over two years prior, but the order to free slaves wasn’t foll...

Since the Fair Tax Amendment was rejected last November, advocates are focusing their efforts toward building greater trust around the initiative and ensuring people across the state understand its purpose. The Fair Tax Amendment would have introduced a progressive income tax to Illinois. The state currently mandates a flat income tax of 4.95 percent.  Illinois ranks eighth in the country for tax inequality, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Throughout the state, the ...

She was arrested in N.J. when pot was illegal. Now its not, and she wants reparations. Jon Schuppe The war on drugs came to Berneice Evans doorstep in February 1990. She was a single mother pressing shirts in the back room of a dry cleaner when police officers bashed open the door of her apartment in Neptune, New Jersey. Raising guns at her two young daughters and their elderly babysitter, they announced a raid, demanding to know where Evans was and threatening to put the sobbin...