Ste’Phan McGuire didn’t realize he would be standing beside some of the giants in the local African American community.
At Sunday’s Juneteenth celebration in Central Park, his own Impact Sign stood next to some of the luminaries of Henderson, including the Rev. Dr. Anthony Brooks, Sr., Bobbie Jarrett, and Thomas Platt to name a few.
“That’s awesome,” he said. “That feels great.”
Most of the Hendersonians featured on the Impact Signs that are a part of the Juneteenth Celebration each year have passed and left a lasting legacy or have been working in the community for decades. McGuire, meanwhile, is on the rise.
“It feels like I’m making a difference,” he said.
McGuire was one of two new Impact Signs added to the display set out in the Central Park gazebo for each summer’s Juneteenth Celebration. The other was Grant Esther Marshall Thomas, who served in the 6888th battalion—known as “The Six Triple Eight”—at the end of World War II.
The battalion is credited with organizing a system, sorting and then getting a backlog of some 17 million pieces of mail delivered in the last year of World War II. The battalion’s credo was “No mail, low morale.”
When Thomas returned to Henderson after the war, she was active in the local NAACP, working alongside the Rev. Dr. Anthony Brooks, according to a previous Hendersonian article that detailed Thomas’ work and also told about her daughter’s trip to Washington, D.C. to be a part of a celebration honoring those women who served in “The Six Triple Eight.”
During the 1950s and 1960s, her daughter Debra McGuire said the local NAACP was strong, working to integrate schools and organizing sit-ins at Newberry’s, Ferrell’s, Woolworth’s and Ruby’s.
Thomas was also a part of the group that pushed to get the John F. Kennedy Center built, McGuire said. Her mother also headed up the youth branch of the NAACP.
Ste’Phan McGuire said he knows the work before him is a continuation of what brought him this far. He said in mentoring and talking to students in Dr. Michelle Chappell’s Transition 2 Beyond program at Henderson County High School, he’s noticed that they connect with a younger person who also looks like them.
“They can always learn by someone who’s gone before you,” he said.
McGuire has also assisted with students at Henderson Community College, from where he graduated. He’s also a graduate of Murray State University with a degree in social work and now is employed at Matthew 25 Aids Services as a case manager. All of it is to help the community that he grew up in, he said.
He plans to pursue a Master’s degree, become a mental health therapist and open up his own practice, hopefully in Henderson.
“If things align, I’d like to have one in Henderson someday,” he said, adding that he’d like to “help the people who have helped me my whole life.”
It was the fifth annual Juneteenth Celebration on Sunday. In addition to the Impact Signs on display, community organizations set up booths, food trucks parked on Main Street and the sounds of Soul N The Pocket filled the air.
According to one of the organizers, the Rev. Charles Johnson, the event is a celebration of successes and the African American community as a whole.
“We celebrate our heart and our culture,” he said.
The Juneteenth committee uses three words as a motto: “Educate, empower and inspire.” This year, the celebration focused on empower, and Johnson said it was a call to empower the community to “be better, do better” and as community, “stay strong, stay united.”
Finally, at the event, four $500 scholarships were awarded to local students who will attend or are attending a postsecondary institution or a trade school. The recipients are Kennedi Carter, Rashia Cansler, Zoe Mills and Diamond McGuire.
