Adrienne Hines (left) and Pam Reynolds worked on the first June Jubilee in 1976. (Photo by Don Long courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch Collection, The Valentine)
Atop the roof of Harper’s Hardware on the morning of Saturday, June 5, 1976, the organizers of the first June Jubilee gazed down upon the scene on Sixth Street.
With festive bunting hung, chairs borrowed from neighborhood churches arranged, scents wafting from food vendors and the Artmobile parked, festival marketing director Pam Reynolds and Adrienne Hines, the president of the Federated Arts Council of Richmond, looked at each other and wondered: After seven months of planning and cajoling, will anybody show up?
This was the Bicentennial year, and the country was ready to party. Richmond meanwhile struggled to redefine itself amid transitional times. Five years before, a renewal project that included the controversial Coliseum had disrupted neighborhoods and their businesses. The recently completed I-95 expressway and Powhite Parkway that cleaved through parks, retail, residences and objections allowed for stoplight-free — but tolled — entry into the city but also a speedy exit into the expanding suburbs.
The Arts Council hired Kathy Dwyer from Washington, D.C., as its executive director, and she, along with the council leadership, built a board that included representatives from the symphony and the ballet, along with corporate leaders.
Musician and arts advocate Plunky Branch describes Dwyer as a visionary. “Her overview was that art could be a force for social change,” he says. The Arts Council embraced the ways in which art in its various forms could build a bridge between the mostly white arts community and Black power brokers.
GWAR parades through the street during the 1986 June Jubilee. In later years, the event was criticized for booking national acts over local performers. (Photo courtesy Bobby Gorman)
Branch’s parallel organization, Branches of the Arts, supported the Richmond Jazz Society, Ezibu Muntu, Larry Bland and the Volunteer Choir, and other groups. Branch credits Dwyer with the idea of unifying Branches of the Arts with the Arts Council, with Branch taking on the role of program director.
City Council had dispatched a task force to see how other cities had revived their city centers, and former Mayor Thomas P. Bryan Jr., also on the Arts Council board, believed the city needed a signature event.
He turned to fellow board member Hines, who enlisted Pam Reynolds, who had a background in advertising and cultural affairs. Reynolds christened the festival “June Jubilee” and used nontraditional media to spread the word: T-shirts, inserts in grocery bags and promotional announcements included with utility bills, all new ideas in Richmond.
Both women were also newcomers.
In a 1990 Richmond Review article about June Jubilee’s origins, Hines said, “I remember Tommy telling me, ‘Adrienne, you don’t realize how critical this is because you’ve only been here six years, but this is really important for Richmond.’ ”
Reynolds had moved to Virginia two years prior with her husband, Richard “Major” Reynolds III, a Democratic contender for lieutenant governor.
She in 1990 described the festival as “the baby born in the two rooms in the basement of the Chamber of Commerce.”
From the start, Jubilee planners wanted what today is called inclusion. Branch says that alliteration and the summery shimmer of “June Jubilee” appealed to partying in public spaces. “It was also a significant time frame for the Black community,” he says, coinciding with Juneteenth (June 19), which commemorates the final liberation from slavery.
June Jubilee catered to families. Here, “Feathers the Clown” (Beverly J. Liker) paints Pac-Man on the face of Dwayne Johnson, 5, in 1983. (Photo by P. Kevin Morley courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch Collection, The Valentine)
Bryan introduced Hines to the ministers of downtown’s Black churches. “[Bryan] and other people helped me meet artists and performers in the Black community,” Hines recalled. “Some people thought we were a little goofy, but lots of people helped to open up doors.”
Staging a daytime street party on Sixth — “a dumpy little street in those days,” Hines remarked — and shifting it after 6 p.m. to Shockoe Slip seemed strange to some. (“We had to draw maps because nobody knew where it was,” Reynolds said.)
The city chose Sixth Street due to its proximity to the Coliseum and the Miller & Rhoads and Thalhimers department stores. Highway construction and the Coliseum, however, had removed residents and the businesses they supported. Storefronts stood empty.
The logistical difficulties of the first Jubilee ranged from placing folding chairs (and returning them) to assuring a band director that his naked pate would not be burned while standing on the Coliseum steps. (He received a hat.) Finding tents large enough to cover some of the attractions proved to be an aggravating, and in certain instances impossible, task.
The roster included arts exhibitions and crafts booths, a puppet show, presentations of opera, dance and theater, hands-on pottery-making and T-shirt tie-dyeing.
The organizers ordered 500 chicken dinners for that first evening’s anticipated audience. About 15,000 showed up. An estimated 100,000 people attended during the two days.
Later Jubilees showcased lesser-known aspects of town. The Old City Hall location (1977) played a role in saving that structure, and the Brown’s Island site (1983-84) attracted thousands of people who hadn’t known of its existence.
The Jubilee evolved into a separate nonprofit. “This way, the festival and the Arts Council could seek separate grants,” Branch explains. June Jubilee received guidance onto further successful stages through the energy and creativity of arts advocate Phyllis DeMaurizi and music director Larry Bland, both of whom died in 2020.
June Jubilee ’76 operated with about 150 volunteers, a $20,000 budget and a sense of enthusiasm. By 1979, the annual event stretched to five days before snapping back to three in 1980. By the time of Jubilee ’90, the 1,500 volunteers were backed by a treasury of $346,000.
Preparing for June Jubilee, 1976 (Photo by Carl Lynn courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch Collection, The Valentine)
The Jubilee’s footprint grew, as did its mixture of national and regional acts. The three-day 1989 festival included local favorites Plunky & Oneness, Page Wilson, and My Uncle’s Old Army Buddies, paired with notable out-of-towners such as The Wailers, Three Dog Night, the Soviet Union’s Leningrad Dixieland Jazz Band, and Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band.
1984 June Jubilee on Brown’s Island (Photo by P. Kevin Morley courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch Collection, The Valentine)
The Arts Council in 1995 turned its attention away from June Jubilee to create a downtown arts district. The festival continued when Downtown Presents!, The Valentine, the Elegba Folklore Society and others pitched in.
June Jubilee transformed into the one-day Ukrop’s/Target Family Jubilee at Tredegar, and the brand eventually faded into cultural history.
Branch observes that June Jubilee’s legacy is the durability of public-private partnerships and underwriting of cultural occasions. “It proved to the powers that be that the arts were a means for a successful bringing together of communities,” he says.
The festival seeded a variety of downtown festivals for generations of revelers. Events ranging from Friday Cheers and the 2nd Street Festival to Easter on Parade and the Richmond Folk Festival are descended from the baby born in the basement of the Chamber of Commerce amid the spirit of ’76.
