DAYTON — People all around the Miami Valley are gathering to celebrate the announcement of enslaved people gaining freedom − Juneteenth.
News Center 7’s Amber Jenkins stopped by one celebration in Dayton.
The event started at about 3 p.m. but people were out there around 2 p.m. to get a good seat on the lawn at the Levitt Pavilion.
There was a large crowd, and they enjoyed the music and food, and it’s because of Juneteenth.
In fact, people in Dayton have celebrated Juneteenth since the 1800s.
“Particularly Black Daytonians have had these celebrations, had been organizing, to honor and commemorate those special field orders,” said Faheem Curtis-Khidr, History Professor at Sinclair Community College.
Juneteenth brings hundreds of people around Dayton together for food, music and a history lesson.
“On the lawn, we are carrying on with the legacy of freedom,” said Sierra Leone, Executive Producer of Home of the Creative Arts. “This is our third year in that theme. In face of erasure, we know that this work is imperative.”
In 1865, Union troops in Galveston, Texas, announced the Civil War was over and thousands of enslaved people were free.
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News that’s worth celebrating every year.
“Because freedom is inclusive,” Curtis-Khidr said. “Freedom is not gerrymandered to one group of people. It’s all encompassing.”
Celebrating 250 years of American History means celebrating Juneteenth.
A lot has changed in this country since enslaved people were freed.
“It’s also ushers in Jim Crow,” Curtis-Khidr said. “And how do Black folk navigate that and survive that and brings us into the modern context.”
During the Jim Crow era, Black travelers needed to know where they could go.
The Negro Motorist Green Book was a travel book to inform Black travelers of safe places all across the country, and there are three Dayton addresses in that book.
“It also reflects that even in Ohio, there were places and towns and cities where Black folks weren’t welcomed,” Curtis-Khidr said. “But it also reflects back into the theme of resistance and autonomy.”
Amber went to two of those Dayton addresses in the Green Book, and one of those is in downtown Dayton.
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907 W. Fifth Street is where the Miami Valley housing opportunities and other nonprofits work out of but there’s almost a century’s worth of history inside those brick walls, especially
The building was considered a safe spot for black travelers.
“Dayton has one of the richest black histories throughout the entirety of the Midwest,” Curtis-Khidr. “If you look at our history from the first people who passed through here to the current. It was Mayor McGee and others; we’ve always been a thermometer.”
A postal worker in Harlem created the Green Book in 1936.
The building on W. Fifth Street was one of the three Dayton locations listed in that book.
“One of the things that we recognized is that during this time, Black folks were moving into the middle class,” Curtis Khidr said. “So, part of being an American middle class is having a car, but one of the things that Black folks were also experiencing, and is not just the south but across the country, it’s that they’re not always welcomed.”
But this spot was deemed safe in the Green Book, and back then, it was a YMCA.
“My grandma used to tell stories about the Y,” said Shelly Smith of Dayton. “She talked about all the things that happened on Fifth Street, and I think we miss out by not seeing it.”
Smith was preparing to celebrate Juneteenth with her dogs, Dunce and Kane.
She said Fifth Street was another home for the black community.
“A bunch of shops,” Smith said. “I think they partied on Fifth Street. I think she talked about the entertainer that would come through to the area.”
Another Dayton spot in the Green Book is the Thomas Building, but in 2026, it’s Spaghetti Warehouse.
We talked with a customer having a meal, and she was not surprised that this address was in the Green Book. She always felt welcome here.
“We always used to come when we were kids anyway,” said Angela Lovelace of Dayton.
There are pieces of Black History all over the city.
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