-- PROGRAM SCHEDULE --
scroll down for map/directions
ALL DAY
12-6pm
Free Food
Children's Fun Zone
Jump Houses
Bean Bag/ YardToss
Horse Shoe Toss
Face Painting
Horseback Riding
Dancing To Jammin' DJ Damascus
Country Store & Art Gallery
1:00 -
2:00
LEGISLATOR RECEPTION & MEDIA
AVAILABILITY
2:00 -
3:00
COMMUNITY PROGRAM
Spiritual Solo
Blessing of the Marina, Fleet & Festival
Bean Bag/ YardToss
Horse Shoe Toss
Face Painting
Spiritual Solo
Welcome From Prologue & About Our Maritime Academy
Introduction of Distinguished Guests
Women of the River Award
Mom of the Year Award
Unveiling of Roots of Success Eco-Art Installation
About Chicago's Calumet Underground Railroad
Spiritual Solo
3:00 - 5:30
JOURNEY TO FREEDOM TOUR
Underground Railroad River Boat Tours
with Dr. Larry McClellan
3:00 - 5:30
FISHING CLINICS
with Illinois Department of Natural Resources
3:30
MISSISSIPPI ROAD BIRD WATCHING
TOUR
with Judy Pollock
Prologue's
Freedom Fest is free and open to the public - a day of family, food, fun, and
special remembrance of the cost of freedoms which we freely inherited
as the gift of our ancestors, yet to which we
still aspire.
As we celebrate culture and heritage and community with this free
festival, we take the time to remember a truism today - that 'freedom isn't
free.' Freedom was not free to the seekers who risked their all for peace and
power in the years of court- and church-sanctioned slavery in America - those
who stood up and were murdered, maimed, or manipulated into silence and shame
for their demand of dignity.
And how slowly did the news of our so-called emancipation move?
Freedom was also not free to the millions of humans who labored on
under the lash even years after Liberty had signed her name to our papers...and
so we remember the joy and anguish of Juneteenth.
For the rare black merchant mariners of the day, who enjoyed
special status as employees and entrepreneurs in an industry we make special
pains to celebrate at our Fest - we especially recognize that they knew freedom
as a subtle flavor burnt at the edges by the subjugation of their land-bound kin
and kind.
And for those who left their plows in the field and headed
"upsouth" in legions a hundred and more years later in America's Great Migration
- black folks blazing north for freedom and economic opportunity in the years
Reconstruction spawned Jim Crow - for them freedom was also not free. They paid
with everything dear as they settled in the 'blackbelts' around the country,
segregated as easy prey.
Here in the Age of the New Jim Crow, we remain ignited
to the cause of freedom which remains vulnerable even after centuries.
In the words of a favorite prayer:
"We give thanks today for all those who came before
us,
paving the way that the gift of life could be ours.
We give thanks to those who died in the Middle
Passage.
Their spirit lives today in the waters that
surround the world.
We give thanks for those who chose to live,
whose names are forgotten or unknown.
We give thanks to those whose blood is alive today in our
veins
for their willingness to be an expression of life."
13421 S. Vernon AVenue, Chicago
South of Altgeld Gardens in the Golden Gate Community
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