As Victoria Boateng took a seat before the crowd, blending African tradition and her advocacy for autism, she embodied the spirit of Saturday’s celebration.
Boateng performed the djembe — a West African drum historically used for storytelling and spiritual ritual — before a raucously cheering crowd at Accessible Juneteenth, an event commemorating the contributions of Black people with disabilities.
“I was diagnosed with autism when I was 3 years old and I couldn’t speak until I was 7, so I was able to use my gift of djembe to communicate. I wanted to bring my gift to them to show them that they can play — they can do anything they want to do,” said Boateng, who also offers classes teaching drumming to others with disabilities.
A focus on sharing one’s gifts and celebrating disability defined the Saturday afternoon gathering. The mission was simple: a celebration of Black disabled joy.
“We’re proud of our multiple identities. We’re dope. We’re not going anywhere. And we’ll continue to build our communities, our nation, and the world with our many talents. And we’ll continue to brag about it just like we brag about being Black and proud in general,” said co-lead organizer Timotheus “T.J.” Gordon Jr.
As a collaboration between the Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition, UIC Disability Cultural Center, Access Living, the Chicago Disability Pride Parade and the Institute on Disability and Human Development, the event worked to “elevate and raise awareness and lift up the voices, concerns, issues, joys and culture of disabled people of color,” said co-lead organizer Jae Jin Pak, whose attire boasted the phrase “Equality Hurts No One.”
After noticing Chicagoland’s lack of safe spaces for disabled people of color, the two organizers decided to help close the gap.
“I often feel like I’m an alien or an outsider to both the Black community and the disability community,” said Gordon, who was wearing a yellow T-shirt that read “Speak up / Speak out.” He described feeling “isolated, marginalized, or even hated” at times as he has attempted to navigate both worlds.
“In the Black community, there’s this belief that we cannot show our weakness. And we often view disability as a weakness even though oftentimes disability is why we’re doing great things in the first place,” he said.
At the Juneteenth celebration, Gordon felt safe to celebrate “the fullness of being Black without shedding an identity,” he said.
People in the crowd echoed Gordon’s desire for inclusion.
“We don’t often get included,” said attendee and emcee Brittany King. This event showed “that we should represent what we do by ourselves, for ourselves.”
The celebration included an open mic, raffle, snacks and community building.
Attendees Sierra Vinnett and Safiya James quickly bonded after discussing their shared lupus diagnosis and challenges with housing discrimination, low disability payments and feeling unheard by medical professionals. Despite the adversities they face, their exchange also included the sharing of goals and dreams with James expressing her hope to one day open “the first-ever neurodivergent-focused digital production company.”
In addition to entertainment, the event provided its attendees with education — telling the story of the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas who were liberated from slavery over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. When telling this history, organizers also noted the many disabled Black change-makers who lived both before and after June 19, 1865 — such as Harriet Tubman, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Curtis Mayfield — whose full narratives, including their disabilities, “ought to be celebrated more often.”
