You may not remember what you were doing on June 21, 2025. But it’s a day Angel Spears will never forget.
It was a Saturday and Tulsa was hosting its annual Juneteenth Festival. As the hot summer day gave way to a warm night, a peaceful celebration in the Historic Greenwood District turned deadly.
Around 11 p.m., police say they heard shots ring out and saw people running in every direction.
Spears was at home when her phone started blowing up with calls from her nephew and family friends that her 22-year-old son Isaiah Knight had been shot. So she did what any mom would do and headed to the festival-turned-crime scene.
But once she got there, all she could do was watch from a distance.
“(The police) never let me go down there to see him. And then eventually, the coroner came and you see them put him in that black bag and leave, and then that was it,” Spears told The Eagle in her first interview since the shooting.
Knight was dead and seven other people were injured. Now, with Juneteenth a little more than a month away, Spears is still adjusting to her new normal while calling on city officials to take more security measures at this year’s festival.
The celebration organized by Tulsa Juneteenth Inc. has been around since 2013. It attracts an estimated 50,000 attendees to Greenwood over a days-long stretch surrounding June 19.
“As big as Juneteenth is … you would think they would just take it more seriously as far as making sure everyone feels safe,” Spears said.
In the aftermath of the shooting and other violent events, Mayor Monroe Nichols and city councilors instituted a curfew prohibiting unaccompanied minors from being downtown from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. That curfew is in place through at least October 2026.
But Spears believes that was an insufficient and merely symbolic response. Given where the main festival grounds are — north of the I-244 bridge — the curfew wouldn’t have applied to the area even if it was in place at the time of the shooting.
As planning for the 2026 event moves forward, Tulsa Juneteenth executive director Lauren Corbitt-Evans said organizers are working with the police department to implement a coordinated safety plan. The festival will offer condensed programming over three days instead of four.
“It’s a rebuilding year,” she said. Last year’s tragedy hit a personal note for her, as her mom was shot and killed in 2022.
“Gun violence is all too prevalent to me,” Corbitt-Evans said. “It took me a lot of time and prayer to figure out why I was doing this … and why it was important to me.”
To that point, Corbitt-Evans, Nichols, Knight’s aunt and other community leaders posted a video on Instagram in April saying Juneteenth “remains a symbol of resilience, and that spirit continues to guide us as we build a future rooted in safety, unity, and hope.”
“I wanted to showcase that, as well as my heart towards the community and what we experienced, but also to share the resilience that I felt in moving forward,” Corbitt-Evans said.
While the public response to the video has been mostly positive, funders haven’t returned as quickly and raising money has proven to be challenging.
“It continues to be a sore spot and a difficult place for us,” Corbitt-Evans said, adding that programming may be further pared down. “We are always looking for help to sustain this event.”
As for Spears, she’s showing resilience of her own even as the past year has been “very mentally challenging, very depressing … and very heartbreaking.”
She remembers her son as “very kind-hearted and respectful” and “a good kid” but she has no plans to return to the place where he took his last breath.
“No, I definitely won’t be going to the festival,” she said — unless it’s to honor him. “Of course, if there is a tribute or something like that, then I may go for the tribute itself.”
The 2026 Juneteenth festival is set to run June 19-21 with more details to be released in the near future.
