Staff Reports
Poplar Bluff's Juneteenth celebration will be from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Wheatley School.
Activities will begin with a motorcycle show by Charles Blackman and his friends. The official welcome will be given at 1 p.m. by guest speaker Ashlee Roberts Ph.D., who recently earned her doctoral degree at Saint Louis University.
Rex Rattler Sr., one of the organizers, said Roberts, who is from Poplar Bluff, will offer encouraging words about higher education and technical training. She will be available to talk with others on an individual basis as a way to give back to the community and people who have helped her in achieving her goals.
Activities will include a free throw competition for all ages and entertainment including a performance by Show-Me Elite Dance Team, food vendors with BBQ, fish and chicken wings, card games and dominoes. The dance team will feature Brynet Trice and other teenage girls from Poplar Bluff doing a dance they composed to perform to Beyonce's song "Freedom."
Rattler said, everyone is invited to Juneteenth, which is a "cultural celebration signifying freedom a bit different than the Fourth of July."
The observance known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day, is an American holiday commemorating the June 19, 1865, announcement of emancipation from slavery in Texas. The celebration has spread across the United States as a time for reflection and rejoicing and a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future.
Wheatley School, located at 921 Garfield St., is in the Garfield Historic District, which also includes Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church and Rattler's Grocery with its attached little house.