Tonya Maze, an administrator at St. Thomas Aquinas School, spent months researching Black history and reaching out to local business owners for a Juneteenth celebration at the school.
The day’s heavy rain wasn’t going to stop her. It didn’t stop dozens of students, families and neighbors from coming out to celebrate at the Superior Avenue school, either.
They packed the school’s gym, where Maze put up posters with stories of significant moments in Black history and biographies of prominent figures.
“We have to understand what Juneteenth is about, why we celebrate it, and then what can we do to not only just celebrate the day, but celebrate us,” Maze said. “I am a Black woman, a Black mother. I want my children to know who they are, what they came from.”
The event brought together a handful of Black business owners offering things such as handmade mugs, bath products, barbecue and desserts. The Cleveland State University basketball team stopped by to party with the students, too.
Juneteenth goes back to 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in Confederate Texas and declared more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state to be free. It was two years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
The history is important, Maze said, but the holiday is about more than that.
“That was the history that we were forced into,” Maze said. “In all actuality, it angers me, and I don’t want to hear something that’s going to make me angry. I want to hear the positive. I want to hear, ‘Tonya, you can be better. You can teach your children to be better. You can be whatever it is that you want to be. There’s no limits.’”
Maze is the operations coordinator at St. Thomas Aquinas, but she steps in to teach sometimes, too. She wants her students to know that they are more than the stereotypes society often pushes on them, she said.
“If you want to be a doctor, be a doctor and be the best darn doctor that you can be,” Maze said. “And not because somebody said, ‘Well, we’re going to allow you to be a doctor,’ but it’s because it’s what you wanted to do.”
St. Thomas Aquinas School Principal Rachael Dengler has been working with Maze to expand the school’s Black History programming, she said. Maze envisions a Pan-African Studies class and a library collection featuring Black historians and authors.
“This is important for all people, not just Black people, to celebrate today,” said Dengler, who is white. “When we celebrate today, we’re recognizing and celebrating how we can support Black people too and appreciate Black history as a part of American history.”