Juneteenth party highlights new community center, where all can feel ‘at home’

By the time the first few notes of the song “Cupid Shuffle” were played, a group had gathered, moving left and right in line with the song’s lyrics in the center of a parking lot at the Juneteenth Block Party.

Juneteenth Idaho, a nonprofit organization, posted notice of the party on its Facebook and Instagram accounts in hopes of drawing the Black community in Boise together to celebrate the holiday. It was held Saturday — Juneteenth itself is Thursday, June 19 — to spotlight a community center meant to connect Treasure Valley residents.

Shari Baber, a co-founder of the center, said hosting the celebration on the weekend before Juneteenth was a good opportunity to bring attention to the facility, which opened last year, while also commemorating a day that’s been celebrated for over 150 years but first became a federal holiday in 2021.

It celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.

Baber said the event was a great way to “invite the community to see where the community center is.” Its purpose is to create a space for Black Idahoans to connect and bring people in the Boise area together, said Baber, one of three co-founders with Meridian Negilski and Claire-Marie Owens.

Baber heads the nonprofit organization Brown Like Me, a mentorship program for Black children adopted into white families, and the Boise Soul Food Festival, in addition to owning Cut-n-Up and Company, a salon for ethnic hair.

The community center, adjacent to Cut-n-Up, doesn’t have an official name, the co-founders said. But Baber said she felt strongly about providing area residents with a space where they “feel like they belong.”

“My primary goal is to give people in this community a place where they feel centered, seen, heard and supported,” Baber said.

Owens, who’s involved with the nonprofit Juneteenth Idaho, has a similar vision for the center, saying that it should be a space that is welcoming for all.

“It feels like your grandma’s or your auntie’s house,” Owens said. “It should be a place that you can walk into and just feel comfortable and at home.”

The center exists for networking, conducting business or even just relaxing, according to the co-founders.

Black community in Boise and Treasure Valley

The opening of this community center was partially a result of Baber’s belief that there’s a misconception about Idaho’s Black population, which is small but not nonexistent.

“I want to change the narrative,” Baber said. “When people think there’s no Black community here, there’s definitely a Black, strong, loving, successful group of people here who call ourselves Black Idahoans.”

Baber said Idaho’s large non-native community also inspired the development of the center.

“A lot of us are transplants, and this makes Idaho feel like home,” Baber said.

According to Negilski, who is a cultural arts educator with Umoja Arts LLC, the Black community within Boise lacked a great space to come together and collaborate.

“Even though we are in a space that’s by and for marginalized communities, it is for the larger community,” said Negilski, who hopes it brings “people from different walks of life.”

“Now that we have a space to be, I feel like it can’t help but create new connections. And when you have those new connections, that increases appreciation for one another, for diversity, for other people’s lived experiences, and getting to know one another,” Negilski continued.

There’s a food truck at the side of the building, and a community kitchen is going to be built next door to the center. The food truck and kitchen will be rented out by “up-and-coming food entrepreneurs,” according to Negilski.

During the block party, individuals worked on a community mural together, reading, “As you grow, we grow.” Participants painted their hands green and left their handprints on the mural in the shape of leaves on a tree.

The co-founders said they have many plans for the community center, such as hosting yoga classes and perhaps other activities, but as of now, it’s primarily just a meeting place to organize and interact.

“It’s not only just what the community center can do for people, but what people can help bring to the community center,” Baber said. “It’s an exchange, it’s all of us working together for the good of the community.”

This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 11:42 AM.