Sandy Springs celebrates Juneteenth with music, dance

The City Green and Byers Theatre were filled with hundreds of people from Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Brookhaven, and other communities in celebration of Juneteenth.

Sandy Springs City Council Member Melody Kelley led the efforts for the celebration again in its second year.

“I originally embarked on this adventure of bringing Juneteenth as an event to Sandy Springs because of my grandfather in his memory, and that continues to be the reason it matters to me,” Kelley said.

The large crowds indicated that the community has an appetite for programming like the Juneteenth celebration, which featured educational exhibits, dance, music, art, and local black owned businesses.

This year marked the event as a joint effort by the three cities, with residents and organizations from each city taking part in the many activities, from the Lynwood Park Community Choir in Brookhaven performing on stage to the Dunwoody Preservation Trust offering a history lesson about a Black community in Sandy Springs.

The Namari Dance Center presented a production of Imani, with dancers sharing the stage with the Lynwood Park Community Choir, in an hour-long, free production in Byers Theatre.

Exhibitors ringed the City Green with booths filled with food, farm products, jewelry, and other handmade products, educational exhibits, genealogy research, and educational activities.

At the Dunwoody Preservation Trust booth Vanessa Blanks, its curator and education director, created an exhibit on DeWald’s Alley for the event. DeWald’s Alley was in the historically black neighborhood along Barfield Road in Sandy Springs. Members of the African-American community lived there from around 1920 until the early 1960s when development around the Perimeter began.

The name came from builder George DeWald, a Jewish businessman. The white community allowed him to rent to African Americans. Many of the kids went to school at Mount Mary’s Baptist Church. When it closed and moved to Glenwood in Brookhaven, those kids had to be bussed to a Black Alpharetta school 15 miles away despite two other schools being nearby.

Brookhaven brought a display about the Lynwood community and Lynwood Park Red School, which opened in 1942 and closed during the integration of DeKalb County schools in 1968. The students from the school became known as the Lynwood Trailblazers for their role in integration.

Today, the school building functions as the Lynwood Park Recreation Center and the headquarters of Brookhaven’s Parks Department.

One of the Black-owned small businesses attending the Juneteenth celebration was Kendall Rae Johnson with her aGROWKulture Urban Farm of Atlanta. Johnson was the youngest certified farmer in the nation when she started her farm at age six and brought peaches, plums and watermelon from her farm to the celebration.

“My great-grandpa taught me how to propagate collard greens. I thought it was magical to me,” Johnson said. “So every time when my dad would cook fruits and vegetables, I would take every seed of those fruits and vegetables and put it back into the ground on my patio porch. Soon I had a patio porch full of fruits and vegetables that I could eat.”

Johnson and her family couldn’t eat everything she grew, so she started giving away produce to her neighbors. Then she started teaching her friends everything she knew about farming.

In addition to growing fruits and vegetables, the farm offers tours and sells products such as Kendall’s Beelicious Honey and Kraezy Good Marinara Sauce.

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