BLOOMINGTON-NORMAL, Ill. (WMBD) \u2014 Bloomington-Normal\u2019s Miss Juneteenth Mackenzie McCray and Little Miss Juneteenth Journey Lawson made their public debut over the weekend as they were introduced at the Juneteenth Festival at Miller Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat made me want to join the pageant was that there is a problem facing in my generation where Black History and Juneteenth is being erased or seen as lesser than,\u201d said McCray. \u201cBy joining the pageant, I wanted to use this opportunity to be able to join together the significance of Juneteenth and Black History.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawson is grateful her school\u2019s lunch monitor and mother gave her an encouraging push to compete in the pageant.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy favorite part has been the service project. It was really fun. We bagged up food and we were also sorting food,\u201d said Lawson. \u201cAnd another great part was the festival where we got acknowledged. That was just really fun and a great way to be part of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCray and Lawson look forward to making connections in the community and working with the youth.<\/p>\n
WMBD TV first reported this story. You can read the original story online at CIProud.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BLOOMINGTON-NORMAL, Ill. (WMBD) \u2014 Bloomington-Normal\u2019s Miss Juneteenth Mackenzie McCray and Little Miss Juneteenth Journey Lawson made their public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-278296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}