Good News Is Arriving in Rondo: The Sixth Annual Rondo Juneteenth Celebration Honored the Past and Rallied for the Future
Contributing writer Clint Combs reports on the sixth annual Rondo Juneteenth Celebration in St. Paul, where Gov. Tim Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Tina Smith received medals of honor, the late Yusef Mgeni was honored posthumously and speakers addressed the fight against the SAVE Act, attacks on DEI and the nationwide battle over reparations and restorative justice.
At the sixth annual Rondo Juneteenth Celebration, hundreds gathered in the street outside the Rondo Commemorative Plaza in St. Paul on Friday for a ceremony that was equal parts celebration, tribute, and rallying cry.
Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, the day Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced to enslaved people that they were free, more than two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Wound That Built the Plaza
Rondo was always the heart of Black life in St. Paul, a once-thriving corridor of churches, businesses, and culture. That world was shattered when Interstate 94 was bulldozed through the neighborhood in the 1950s and 1960s, displacing more than 600 Black families. Redlining policies then denied Black families the mortgage benefits extended to white Americans, locking generations out of homeownership and wealth-building.
Leadership Transition at Rondo Center
Marvin R. Anderson stepped down as executive director of the Rondo Center of Diverse Expressions in October. Jonathan Palmer will run the nonprofit that has managed the plaza.
Medals, Tributes, and a Brick for Yusef Mgeni
Gov. Tim Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, Sen. Tina Smith, and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her each received medals of honor for distinguished service. The late Yusef Mgeni, a lifelong Rondo resident and civil rights leader who passed away in April, was honored posthumously as a pillar of the community. A commemorative brick honoring Mgeni is planned for the plaza’s History Walk on Sept. 17.
“Because good news arrived to Galveston and good news is arriving in Rondo,” said Council Member Anika Bowie. “And the good news is that we are becoming more connected than ever.”
The Fight for Black Voting Rights
Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke about how Senate Democrats blocked the SAVE Act. Civil rights groups say it would have hit Black voters especially hard. Nearly 9 percent of voting-age Black Americans lack access to birth certificates and passports, compared to 5.5 percent of white Americans. The act would have severely disrupted in-person voter registration drives, which have been essential for turning out voters in Black communities.
“We must continue to, in your words, look to the future, and that means fighting back every single day against the recent attacks on civil and voting rights,” Klobuchar said. “The so-called Save Act, which would have actually made it so much harder for people to vote, including 69 million married women who would have had to re-register, not to mention everyone’s private voter data being handed over to Homeland Security.”
The fight for Black voting power goes beyond the Senate chamber. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority gutted key parts of the Voting Rights Act, effectively clearing the way for Republican-controlled states to redraw congressional maps that dilute the power of Black voters.
Nine months after Juneteenth became a national holiday, Klobuchar and Smith voted to confirm Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court’s first Black woman and first federal public defender.
“You, Judge, are opening a door that’s long been shut to so many,” Klobuchar said during the confirmation hearings.
“She is a brilliant legal mind and has stellar credentials as a judge,” said Smith. “I have full confidence that she will protect the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution and uphold the promise of equal justice under the law.”
Pushing Back on Attacks on DEI
Flanagan and Walz pushed back against attacks on diversity and inclusion.
“If people say diversity, equity, and inclusion don’t belong here, they’re just wrong,” said Flanagan. “Because it is the power of our identity, it is the power of what people have lived through, what they have fought for, who had died for our liberation, who are willing to continue in that fight.”
“We’ve tried old white men for 250 years. This feels like progress up here for me,” Walz said. “I’ll be damned if we are going to be the nation we can be, that we’re going to erase the things that should have been done differently. If we’re going to erase the pain that went into it, if we’re not going to talk about John Lewis in our schools, I’ll be damned if that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Opal Lee and the Long Arc
Sen. Tina Smith told the story of Opal Lee, the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” who fought for decades to make the holiday federally recognized and whose family home was burned by white rioters on June 19, 1939. Smith closed with Lee’s lesson for the crowd.
“This is hardly a lesson that the strong community of Rondo needs to learn. It is a lesson that you teach,” said Smith.
Reparations and the Nationwide Fight
The gathering came just days after Trump’s Justice Department moved to halt the nation’s first reparations program, which would have sent $25,000 in payments to Black residents in Evanston, Illinois, who suffered housing discrimination. The lawsuit highlights that Rondo’s fight to reconnect after the construction of I-94 is part of a nationwide battle over restorative justice.