Venice’s black community gathered in Oakwood Park last week for an event that had all the ingredients of a typical Juneteenth celebration; soul music, swanky costumes, fried chicken, cornbread and a bounce house for the kids.
But Juneteenth In recent years they’ve been calling it ‘the day,’ ever since President Biden declared it a national holiday in 2021. For more than two decades, Oakwood’s Black residents have been celebrating the third Saturday in June under names such as Hood Day, Neighborhood Day, Community Day and Remembrance Day.
Some residents said the holiday symbolizes the day when black people first started voting Settled in the Oakwood area VeniceAn occasion that was first celebrated over 100 years ago. Whatever the name, it is a time for the community to remember loved ones lost too early and rekindle precious relationships.
Naomi Nightingale speaking at the Juneteenth celebrations in Venice.
(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)
“Gatherings like this have been happening in this park since I was a little girl in the 1960s,” said Venice native, professor and historian Naomi Nightingale.
The word that came to my mind was homecoming. Everyone knew each other so well that they would ask each other about their cousins, mothers and siblings by name. It seemed like no one was able to finish their sentence before new loved ones started greeting them.
But most of the people I spoke to no longer live in the area and could only point to the houses they grew up in. Nightingale estimates that only a third of the attendees still have a Venice zip code, and most of those are renters. Hood Day has never been about protest, but over the past few years, as gentrification has pushed most of Oakwood’s residents out of the neighborhood, the celebration’s political dimensions have become harder to ignore.
A family relaxes at the Oakwood Juneteenth Celebration in Venice. Behind them, new homes are being built in an area that has seen a lot of change.
(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)
“We will never stop trying to preserve the sacrifices our grandparents made for this community,” Nightingale said, adding that she gets at least one call a day from a real estate agent looking to buy her home.
Nightingale said there is “protest and resistance” in trying to keep the community alive. She said bringing Oakwood back to life each year is their way of honoring the sacrifices their ancestors made to live in Venice.
Gwen Moseley, 60, remembers the neighborhood as a communal place where if a child stepped out of bounds he or she could be punished by any of the mothers in the area, who all raised the children together.
“They say it takes a village, and we definitely were a village,” said Moseley, who now lives in the Mid-City area.
Like most of the people I spoke to, she pointed to the house where she used to live. It’s on the street where a home is currently listed on Redfin for $5.3 million. Her father owned the family home in Venice, but when he died, her brother inherited the property and decided to sell it rather than continue to manage it.
She said she regrets it a little, but at least she has Hood Day. Here she can see the children she once rocked in her lap now grown up and become college graduates, maintain old friendships and remain part of the old neighborhood.
Oakwood Juneteenth Celebration.
(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)
“We look forward to this day. We call it Juneteenth now, but we’ve been doing this since before Juneteenth came around. It’s the only time we all get to see each other, other than funerals,” Moseley said.
Geraldine Holloway, 67, said all of her best memories and loved ones are in Oakwood. She recalled the excitement among neighborhood children when McDonald’s first opened on Lincoln Boulevard. The memory of her mother throwing out Big Macs, for which she and her siblings saved up their money, still makes her laugh.
She said the neighborhood really started changing about seven years ago. Her family always rented in Venice, and they spent a few years in Palmdale and other parts of Los Angeles, but there was never a place like Oakwood. She moved back to the neighborhood to be near her grandchildren.
“I never leave. I mean, I leave, but I always come back,” Holloway said.
Geraldine Holloway, 67, said all of her best memories and loved ones are at Oakwood.
(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)
“Every time somebody dies, the kids sell the property. But my family is still here. I have so many family members in this park right now,” Holloway said, as he pointed to them all one by one.
Clinton is a case manager at the Noble Helper Foundation, an anti-youth violence nonprofit that helped establish the holiday. She said the event began with a desire to remember friends and family who are no longer in this world. Churches, community groups and private citizens have funded the event in the past. Attendees hang pictures of their lost loved ones on the park’s chain link fence.
“We came up with the idea of remembrance. Whether you’ve lost someone or are going through some type of tragedy, our one goal was to come out and celebrate,” Noble said.
But it would be wrong to call this holiday a sombre time. No matter what tragedy and regrets the people who participate have faced, Hood Day is a celebration to be celebrated with full vigor.
After the speeches were over, the attendees, including Nightingale, rushed to the dance floor and began performing steps together that everyone knew by heart. Three cars full of hip-hop dancers Joker showed up and started KrumpingA type of dance born in South Los Angeles. People pass each other appropriately sized plates of their favorite foods.
Gwendolyn Moseley, 60, “Da Moss Lady,” talks to customers at her stand at the Oakwood Juneteenth celebration.
(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)
The day was a powerful testament to the idea that a home is more than an asset, especially if you’re from a group that has been historically denied homeownership by racist real estate practices like redlining and racially restrictive deeding. Covenants,
Sometimes home is just a feeling you carry with you, or a cooked meal, a familiar taste.
Sometimes it’s a once-a-year gathering, a holiday hidden within a holiday, a time to share a secret sense of intimacy with the people you grew up with, even if only for a few hours.
