Looking forward to a great celebration!
Saturday and Sunday Schedule - click to expand
Saturday, June 17th 2023
12:55 Opening song – Selma Glory
1:00 Prayer
1:05 Poetry - Melody Marion-Bickham
1:10 Welcome / Black National Anthem
1:15 About BRIDGE
1:20 Song - Occasion Juneteenth Maverick city (Lecrae) / Reading Galveston Texas
1:25 Introduction of Keynote Speaker /Bio Africa Perrin
1:30 Keynote Speaker- Robin Rue Simmons
ANNOUCNMENT RAFFLE -Pam & Becky
1:50 Song Tori Goshay
1:55 Holi Athlete Movement Break
2:15 Seth Golden Child Watson
2:30 Raffle Pull
2:35 Dance - Flosse Ray
2:40 Jesse White Tumblers
3:10 Raffle Pull/ Spoken Word - She.Unapologetic
3:30 Police Award
3:35 Closing Remarks / Song
Sunday, June 18th 2023
9:00am Join us at STUDYS Ministries Church for a combined celebration service and fellowship!
Address:
616 N. Bridgeport Terrace Unit J (6.74 mi)
Robin Rue Simmons
ROBIN RUE SIMMONS BIOGRAPHY
Robin Rue Simmons is the Founder and Executive Director of FirstRepair, a not-for-profit
organization that informs local reparations, nationally. Previously, Rue Simmons was the 5th
Ward Alderman for the City of Evanston, IL, when she led, in collaboration with others, the
passage of the nation’s first government-funded Black reparations legislation.
To date, $20 million has been committed to reparations by the City. She serves as the
chairperson of the City’s Reparations Committee which oversees its initial Restorative Housing
Program. It began disbursements in January 2021. Several other governmental entities across
the country are actively seeking to follow Evanston’s example.
Rue Simmons was born and raised in the largely segregated 5th Ward of Evanston, a city of
75,000 on the shores of Lake Michigan on the northern border of Chicago.
She laid the foundation for her life’s work in 1998 when she became a residential real estate
broker. Troubled by the wealth disparities and concentrated poverty she witnessed locally and
saw in other communities, she wanted to help young adults begin to build wealth through
homeownership.
As an entrepreneur, she has launched and operated multiple businesses, including a bookstore
in the 5th Ward, that also offered free after-school programming. She started a construction
company in Evanston that employed Black tradespeople and developed dozens of affordable
houses funded by the Illinois Neighborhood Stabilization Program. She continues to manage a
handful of residential and commercial properties that she owns in Evanston. Until she started
FirstRepair in 2021, Rue Simmons was the Director of Innovation and Outreach for Sunshine
Enterprises, a not-for-profit on Chicago’s South Side, which has supported over one thousand
entrepreneurs (virtually all African American and three-quarters women) in launching or growing
their own businesses.
Rue Simmons served as an Evanston alderman from 2017-2021, serving on multiple
committees and chairing several. During her tenure, she prioritized improving the lived
experiences of and expanding opportunities for Black residents in Evanston, most notably
through her work on reparations.
Rue Simmons is a current University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Pritzker Fellow, a group
that includes Beto O’Rourke, Tim Ryan and Steve Sisolak. The Institute of Politics is a
nonpartisan program that annually brings groups of prominent politicians, journalists and
diplomats to the University of Chicago to conduct on-campus seminars.
Rue Simmons is also a commissioner of the National African-American Reparations
Commission (NAARC), a board member of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in
America (N’COBRA), and a board member of Evanston’s Connections for the Homeless. She
previously served as a board member for the National League of Cities’ National Black Caucus
of Local Elected Leaders and as the President of the Evanston Black Business Alliance.
1900 Asbury Avenue Evanston, IL 60201 www.FirstRepair.org
Rue Simmons has received numerous awards for her reparations and other public service work
including from the City of Evanston; Evanston/North Shore NAACP; Urban One; Dearborn
Realtists Board; Democratic Party of Evanston; Route Fifty; Realtists Women’s Council of
Illinois; Family Focus; Chessmen Club of the North Shore; Distinguished Alumni – Evanston
Township High School and the recipient of the prestigious 2022 American Association for
Access, Equity, and Diversity (AAAED) (pronounced triple A ED) Rosa Parks Award.
She has been covered in numerous national and international publications, on television and
radio, and in podcasts including The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public
Radio, The Guardian, ABC’s Nightline, and CNN. Rue Simmons is also featured in The Big
Payback, a documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June 2022 and began airing
nationally on PBS on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, January 16, 2023.
Rue Simmons attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she majored in
communications. She has two young adult children.
FOOD and Treats
Pre-Packaged Ice Cream which include, Blue Bunny, Good Humor, Popsicle, Nestle, and Helados Mexican.
We also carry top rated shaved ice flavors from Snowie with over 25 flavors to mix and choose from! On site
Lyrics - Lift Every Voice and Sing
Song by J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won
Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast
God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land
Our native land
Transcript of the Proclamation
January 1, 1863
A Transcription
By the President of the United States of America:
A Proclamation.
Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.
By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
Meaning Behind Juneteenth
What is Juneteenth:
Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday. On June 17, 2021, it officially became a federal holiday.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House two months earlier in Virginia, but slavery had remained relatively unaffected in Texas—until U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”
The year following 1865, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of "Jubilee Day" on June 19. In the ensuing decades, Juneteenth commemorations featured music, barbecues, prayer services and other activities, and as Black people migrated from Texas to other parts of the country the Juneteenth tradition spread.
In 1979, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday; several others followed suit over the years. In June 2021, Congress passed a resolution establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday; President Biden signed it into law on June 17, 2021.
2023 Partners and Participants
Raymond Goodall (Flosse)
Tori Goshay
She.Unapologetic
Meldody Marion- Bickham
The Jesse White Tumblers
Seth Golden Child Watson
Bridge Mission Statement
Mission
Bridge exists to transform our communities by bridging the racial divides in our society; through sharing the love of Christ and empowering people groups to pursue racial reconciliation and restoration while building meaningful relationships.
Vision
Bridging the diversity gap across all generations through love, unity, and community!
The Work of BRIDGE
Build Relationships
We believe in intentionally building meaningful relationships through the love of Christ, to build trust and understanding to discuss sensitive subject matters for the greater kingdom work ahead.
Educate
We desire to educate the community by bringing awareness through conversations and the arts as a way of expression of pain, frustration, hope and joy.
Serve Together
As we learn together, we serve together in unity for our community!
Bridge Founding Members:
Machi Perrin
Isaiah Perrin
William Perrin
Sabrina Perrin
We are located on Facebook BridgeLakeCounty, email:Bridgelakecounty@gmail.com