Juneteenth Strawberry News Today

Evanston residents gathered Saturday for the city’s fourth annual Juneteenth celebration. The city observed the holiday with a parade, kicking off at Robert Crown Community Center, that led into a day-long celebration at Ingraham Park. The national holiday commemorates the emancipation of enslaved Black people. Although Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it...

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...

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...