Juneteenth will be celebrated on June 13 in Federal Way

Published 7:30 am Saturday, June 6, 2026

The Juneteenth flag may not be flying at Federal Way City Hall this year, but local organizations Phenomenal She and Game of Life Mentoring as well as the King County Library System (KCLS) are once again making sure the holiday is celebrated in the city by hosting a free community event.

The event will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. June 13 at the Federal Way Library, 34200 1st Way S., and will feature a Juneteenth story time, community leader panel, author talk, hip-hop story time performance, a Black-owned vendor market, free food and books, a community resource fair and a variety of family friendly activities.

Juneteenth commemorates the effective end of slavery in the United States and is a federally recognized holiday. It provides an opportunity to celebrate the current and historic contributions of Black Americans and the vital nature of the ongoing fight for equal rights and human dignity for all people.

Last year’s Juneteenth flag raising featured a speech by Harold Booker, whose family was the first to integrate the modern community of Federal Way. This wasn’t easy because “Federal Way real estate agents in the early 1960s had a general policy of not selling houses to African Americans,” according to an article prepared for the Historical Society of Federal Way.

The 2025 flag raising was followed by the renaming of Alderbrook Park to Conna Park on land that was owned by Black pioneer and homesteader John Conna over 100 years ago.

This year, Phenomenal She and KCLS scheduled their event a week early due to the overlap of the actual holiday with the city’s soccer-themed festival Kickin’ It, which will run from June 19 to June 21 during the World Cup.

The city has not yet shared how it will be highlighting the national holiday during this year’s Kickin’ It festival, although Mayor Jim Ferrell told the Mirror on June 2 that they are “working on it.”

Councilmember Les Sessoms stated he will hold the flag himself at city hall on June 19 and that community members are welcome to join him. Other community groups are planning Juneteenth flag-waving at the intersection of Pacific Highway South and South 320th Street that weekend as well.

Phenomenal She hosted their first community Juneteenth celebration six years ago, during the “height of the Black Lives Matter movement,” president and executive director Carlecia Bell told the Mirror.

“We were a super new organization as we started in 2018 … during that time in general, it was really important to celebrate Juneteenth. It was a heavy time for communities … it was an opportunity to bring the community together to actually celebrate liberation and to educate,” Bell said.

This first celebration was also the first year that the city of Federal Way raised the Juneteenth flag.

KCLS also recognizes Juneteenth as part of its cultural calendar of programming, so after several years of hosting the event, it was a natural fit for Phenomenal She to partner with the local library to host the celebration.

While all KCLS locations across the county honor and recognize Juneteenth, the event in Federal Way will be their biggest in the county.

“It was important that we hosted that Juneteenth in a community where we know a lot of the folks from underrepresented communities live and have easy access to, so it made a lot of sense to cultivate a collaboration with organizations that already are steeped in those communities and reflect and represent those communities,” Jayna Smith of KCLS told the Mirror.

Smith said partnering on hosting the Juneteenth event has been an opportunity to “deepen that relationship” both with Phenomenal She and Game of Life Mentoring, and “we had such a beautiful turnout and event last year that we wanted to continue this collaboration.”

Looking at this year’s scheduled celebrations, Bell said she’s most excited about the multigenerational aspect of the event.

“The entire family can come out and it’s completely free. I’m also excited that we’ll have a resource fair happening inside of the library and then we’ll have a market space outside to showcase Black-owned businesses. There’s something for everyone to do and celebrate,” Bell said.

Free food from Swagg-n-Wagon and YesMa! Farms will also be available through vouchers supported by Northwest Harvest.

“This celebration is about honoring the history while centering Black joy, culture, and leadership here in South King County…we’re celebrating the people, stories, creativity that shape our community right now,” Bell said.

Smith added that the event will be a “reminder that the library belongs to everyone and this day belongs to our community.”

In celebration of the theme of celebrating current leadership, the community panel will feature leaders whose “collective work spans across reparations, civil rights law, public health equity, gun violence prevention, and LGBTQ+ advocacy, all in one room,” as Dominique Miciano of KCLS put it.

Panelists will include C. Davida Ingram, Executive Director of the Seattle/King County African American Reparations Committee (SAARC), State Representative Jamila Taylor (D-District 30), Leon Richardson, Director of King County Department of Local Services and Deaunte Damper, Community Engagement Specialist, King County Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention and host of “We Live in Color” on Converge Media.

When reflecting on the context of the event in the city, Bell said that “it’s unfortunate that no flags are going to be raised especially in this political climate that we’re in,” noting that in this time it is more important than ever to “bring communities together and not divide us.”

To sum it up in a word, she said that word is “disappointment,” but that this just makes it that much more vital to still choose to “celebrate and to continue to bring community together.”

“It definitely takes a village,” she said. “I don’t think the city is going to stop anything that we have going on because you still have people that are in the city that are advocating for community, for that togetherness. By continuing to have events like this it just means that other people are going to have to step up to show what community is all about.”