Juneteenth: The past, present and future

This week’s Juneteenth cover story spotlights three local trailblazers who are making a difference in our community. But first, let’s start with the basics. Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration in the United States commemorating the end of chattel slavery. 

On June 19, 1865, Texas became the last state of the Confederacy in which enslaved people officially gained their freedom. This years marks the first in which all states commemorate Juneeteenth,and for the second year Monday (June 20) is a federal holiday.   

In 2020, Michigan declared Juneteenth a state holiday (half a decade after Texas). Michigan has seen its fair share of Freedom Days and jubilees, but something about this year’s festivities feels exceptionally electric. It could be that Juneteenth is officially a brand now. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, there are 57 business entities with filed trademark applications involving the word Juneteenth. Forty of those patents were filed within the past two years. It’s naive to think there is a newfound sense of entrepreneurship among African Americans. However, there seems to be a wider platform for pro–Black initiatives. Lansing’s cultural scene is no exception. 

Last month, the Rev. Stan Jenkins of the Lansing First Presbyterian Church pledged $100,000 to the Justice League of Greater Lansing to support reparations for 27,000 African-American residents. And there’s been a lot happening. 

Prince Solace, community outreach director at Lansing First Presbyterian, and Willye Bryan, an entomologist at Michigan State University and a member of the same congregation, formed the Justice League, which advocates faith-based reparations.  They are part of a national interfaith movement to understand the role churches played in slavery. 

In February, the Lansing Economic Area Partnership and the PNC Foundation launched Elevate, a Black business accelerator program spanning across three mid-Michigan counties. Sidney Mccalib was nominated to the program to aid in the expansion of his cultural news outlet, Next Up News, from Lansing to a statewide audience. 

Last year, Oprah Jrenal — running as Oprah Revish — unsuccessfully sought a seat on the Lansing City Council on a platform rooted in accessible housing and defunding police. Her mission to create safe, inclusive spaces across college campuses has just begun. 

For some of the backstories on these movers and shakers, read the following Q&A interviews with Solace, Mccalib and Jrenal. (These interviews have been edited for clarity and concision.) 

Prince Solace 

   Age: 32 

   Lansing First Presbyterian Church 

   Community outreach director 

What does the Justice League do? 

Prince Solace: What we’re looking at is the racial wealth gap that is so precedent all over the country.  We’ve done 15 to 16 different presentations at churches throughout the city of Lansing. We’re talking about slavery and racism from the perspective of history from a spiritual aspect and, of course, from an economical aspect. Our goal is to reach $1 million by the end of 2023 and use those funds to allocate toward reparations in housing, education scholarships and business startups for Africa Americans. 

What we’re doing is happening at a national scale. There was an article written by NBC and it actually featured the Justice League and what we’re doing at the local level. But the article also does an overview of what’s happening in America — as we start to dig up the history of slavery and churches. 

 How do you explain reparations to white people? 

Our federal government has given reparations to groups such as the Japanese for the atrocities that happened in the Japanese internment camps. They’ve given reparations to Native Americans for breaching treaties and removing them off their land illegally. There are other forms of reparation that’s happened for victims of the Holocaust. So, we go over this idea of repairing a community. Once we know there are wrongdoings, whether it be conscious or subconscious, there is a moment for us to help repair. 

We also take a look at the numbers. We look at from 1983 through 2016. We look at how much money that the white family has accumulated. In 1983, it’s roughly around $110,000. By 2016, it’s upwards of about $150,000. This is the median income of wealth for white families, not the average. When we look at the Black family, in 1983, wealth goes from $7,000 down to $5,000. We talk about Jim Crow. We talk about the G.I. Bill. We talk about the Homestead Act. 

Being a part of the Justice League, I’ve had to revisit history. I’ve had to learn more about the in-depth nuances of how this all worked, so I don’t think anybody should be shy about not knowing. It’s not something that’s really emphasized within our high school textbooks. 

 How long have you lived in Lansing? 

I’ve lived in Lansing for 31 out of my 32 years of life. I actually grew up near Potter Park Zoo. I grew up going to Mid-Michigan Leadership Academy. It was actually the Michigan School for the Blind many years ago. It’s well known for Stevie Wonder attending that school. The same campus was used as the first women’s college in Michigan. It later got converted to a middle school and then a high school. I go back every now and then just to walk to campus and volunteer. 

When did you start getting your interest in economic development? 

I think the school definitely was the platform in which I became interested in community development and that really stems from my mom.  I grew up in a household where my mom — whose name is Darlene Rhode but she goes by the name Queen Darlene —would be heavily involved with the Parent Teacher Association. She’d always be helping organize different parades for low-income communities in Lansing, specifically for the LaRoy Froh projects. 

We lived in government housing, and when you live in government housing there’s not too much you can do to the property because you don’t own it. But HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) was OK with us having a garden, so my mom planted tomatoes and peppers on this slanted hill in the back of our little house. I think that’s definitely where the interest began. 

Sidney Mccalib 

   Age: 25  

   Next Up News 

   CEO/president 

   nextupmichigan.com 

How long have you lived in Lansing? 

Sidney Mccalib: About 13 years. 

What made you want to cover local events? 

I started the idea of wanting to put out some type of publication at the very end of 2019, but then the pandemic really took hold of everything. During the pandemic, I just sat back like everybody else and assessed life. At the end of the summer of 2020, I started seeing a lot of the community kind of galvanized behind this idea of pop-up shops. Especially for the diverse communities — Black, brown and LGBTQ communities. 

There used to be a big pop-up shop festival over on Waverly Road in the parking lot of Orleans Fresh Fish & BBQ. I used my blog to start covering it because I didn’t see other outlets talking about it. 

I knew I had the skills and the initiative to start the effort. I decided I wanted to put together a more structured effort because the community would take it more seriously. At the very end of 2020, I brought on my partner, Gordon Lenton, and we decided to launch Next Up News, which is a full-scale effort to highlight the news in Lansing’s urban community. Gordon, our VP, is from Flint so he’s covering that community. We cover stories in Detroit too. Now, we have a full-service platform, not just a blog — something we can develop into a real platform in our state. 

Do you mostly discover culture news and entrepreneurship? 

We have a team. Deja Haynes covers fashion and live anchor reporting. Jawaun Hill covers spirituality and arts and entertainment. We have Demetrius Sims covering arts and entertainment and Black history and empowerment. I cover urban business development, as well as Lansing happenings. Gordon covers Lansing and Flint happenings, as well as urban business development. John Arlee covers Detroit happenings. And we have a media team. We focus on only positive information. We shy away from crime and controversy. We’re looking to be a part of the news and media coverage of our state and we want to make sure that we have a niche lane. 

Is there a story you feel is not getting enough attention? 

I think people are scared to have an honest meet-in-the-middle conversation about guns. There are a lot of proud people and a lot of people who dislike them, but I believe there is a middle ground. 

Do you have a local hero? 

I would say Angela Austin is my local hero. She does more than anyone could imagine to galvanize every level of her community from kids on up to the seniors, from crime and safety to political issues. And she’s done it for many, many years. She was the first person to tell me I could use my abilities to do the same. 

Sharing only positive news about your community, does that feel liberating? 

It’s a freedom that not a lot of people have at normal establishments, but it’s also a freedom that people need. I was able to see the effects that years of just negative information had. I have loved watching the news since I was 6 or               7 years old, but it’s the sheer amount of negative news that gets me. 

Sometimes balanced reporting creates imbalance. What I mean by that is if the news starts at 6 o’clock with this amazing story about a community member and then ends you on 10 People Murdered in Buffalo — you don’t do anything for our community. You just took them on a rollercoaster that kills you after a while. Next Up seeks to bring a new light spirit in essence by only covering positivity, so hopefully you leave our platform with a positive thought. 

Oprah Jrenal 

   Age: 35 

   Gender and Sexuality Campus Center     

   at Michigan State University 

   Assistant director 

What do you do at the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center? 

Oprah Jrenal: Every spring I hold the Queering Racial Justice Summit. It’s a two-day event for students. What we do for our white students, we give them space and opportunity to explore white supremacy that they uphold in LGBTQ spaces. Then for our LGBTQ students of color, we make sure we give them language to name their experience and permission to change their experience and to create better spaces for themselves. We center the voices of queer and trans people of color, so all of our speakers and guest panelists have those identities. Throughout the year, we try to decentralize whiteness as much as possible in who we bring to campus, who we highlight on our website and on our social media, that sort of thing. 

What brought you to Lansing? 

I had been working in residence halls on college campuses and always with an emphasis in advocating for students of color, LGBTQ students of color and all the intersections of all the identities. I kind of hit a wall when my supervisor basically asked me, “Are you going to advocate for students or are you going to keep your job?” I thought that my job was to advocate for students, so I started looking for work that would actually allow me to advocate for students. My friend told me about the assistant director position here with the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center at Michigan State University, and now I get paid to love on queer and trans students. 

Were you one of the first people in your family to go to college? 

Being a first-generation college student, my mom was like, “Oh, you know, you don’t have to stay there. You can come home.”  That was when the scholarships and the grants and stuff had kind of run out and I didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, there were people at the University of Arizona who remembered my name, who forwarded me emails for opportunities. And I wanted to become that person for other students. To remind students that if your parents are telling you to “just stop,” you can also have one external voice telling you that you’re more than capable of doing whatever you want to do. 

Is the University of Arizona where you got radicalized? 

My goodness. What a question. Yeah, I definitely had a lot of my racial identity development happen there. I cut my perm out freshman year. I had been getting perms since I was 4, so it was really wild to be 18, 19 and be like, “Oh, that’s what my hair looks like coming out of my head.” In college, I think there is a moment for (Black people) where they’re like, “Oh, I don’t need to straighten my hair to make white people comfortable. I can actually embrace exactly who I am and find a community that embraces me exactly how I am.” 

Growing up in Los Angeles, what resources or outlets did you go to for LGBTQ+ culture? 

When I was in high school, we had a computer class and I remember we had one website that we would go to. It was like an LGBTQ glossary website. Very 2000. The background was sepia-colored and the text was in comic sans. It had a long page of all these LGBTQ terms like: queer, lesbian, top, bottom. We would wait for the teacher to be distracted and we’d huddle around one computer with other little queer babies and be like, “Oh, that’s you right there? Oh no, that’s me right there.” As we read through the terminology. That was really all we had access to. 

 Last question. Do you have a favorite author? 

Toni Morrison, and my favorite book from her is “Paradise.” I’ve read it a few times. I don’t know if a lot of people think it’s her best book. It’s about these women who created this space for themselves and how angry everybody got about it. In the book, people are questioning them like, “How can you exist if there’s no man here?” They actually destroy their space. I just get stuck on the fact that they created it. They created this world for themselves that was for them. I think that’s beautiful.