Thursday, June 18, 2026

Altadena’s Oldest Historical Group Marks Juneteenth With Fire Survivors’ Voices, Scholarships

[photo credit: Altadena Historical Society]

When the Eaton Fire swept through Altadena in January 2025, it took more than 9,400 structures. It also took family photographs, heirlooms and history that no insurance claim could replace. On Friday, the Altadena Historical Society will debut recordings from survivors who are putting that vanished history back on the record, one voice at a time.

The organization’s annual Juneteenth celebration and scholarship luncheon begins at 12:00 p.m. June 19 at Loma Alta Park. 

The event, which the society’s programs page lists as its fifth annual Juneteenth celebration, will feature the Altadena Oral History Project presentation — documenting stories of resilience from the African American community devastated by the Eaton Fire — along with the Ellen Garrison Clark Scholarship Award ceremony for graduating seniors, a Juneteenth photography exhibit curated by documentarian photographer Alfred Haymond and a display of handcrafted quilts by local master quilters, according to the Altadena Historical Society.

The oral history project, produced in collaboration with Ian Midgley, was born from urgency. More than half of the society’s 17 volunteers lost their homes in the fire, and the black-and-white photographs that families had kept in those homes for generations were gone.

“Before we kind of worked at our own pace,” Veronica Jones, president of the Altadena Historical Society and a resident for more than 60 years, said in an interview with LAist. “Now there’s an urgency to document everything, to get the history of the fire, to get the history that we didn’t have before, to find ways to capture those photographs that may have burned.”

The project has focused first on Black families in west Altadena, a neighborhood shaped by decades of discriminatory housing policies that concentrated African American homeownership in the area hardest hit by the fire. Research from UCLA found that 61 percent of Black households in Altadena were located within the fire perimeter and that nearly half of Black-owned homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

The recordings will be permanently archived by the society, which has maintained collections at the Altadena Community Center since its founding in 1935.

The scholarships are awarded through the Ellen Garrison Clark Fund, named for a 19th-century African American educator and civil rights activist who spent her final years in the Pasadena area and was buried in an unmarked grave at Altadena’s Mountain View Cemetery in 1892. The Altadena Historical Society placed a headstone on Clark’s grave on Juneteenth 2021 — two days after President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law — and has awarded scholarships in her name each year since, according to the society and press coverage of prior events. Organizers have said the annual celebration was originally envisioned by Sandra Thomas and Jones on June 17, 2021, the day Biden signed the act. In 2023, the society awarded two $1,000 scholarships to John Muir High School graduating seniors, according to the society’s programs page.

“We are thrilled to continue this important tradition of celebrating Juneteenth and supporting our local students,” Jones said. “This event not only commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans but also showcases the resilience and strength of the Altadena community.”

Four scholarships will be awarded this year to graduating seniors from John Muir High School who were affected by the Eaton Fire, through the Ellen Garrison Clark Fund. The scholarship tradition began in 2021 and is supported by donations from local businesses and community members, according to the society.

Clark’s story carries a particular local resonance. Born in 1823 in Concord, Massachusetts, the granddaughter of a formerly enslaved Revolutionary War veteran, she spent 25 years teaching in Freedmen’s Schools across the South before moving to Pasadena with her husband. In 1866 — nearly a century before Rosa Parks — Clark was forcibly removed from a segregated waiting room at a Baltimore train station after she sat down to test the new Civil Rights Act, according to the Altadena Library District and the Robbins House, a Concord-based nonprofit that preserves her family’s history.

The Juneteenth celebration has grown steadily since the society began hosting the event. Earlier iterations were held at Farnsworth Park’s William D. Davis Memorial Building, which was destroyed in the Eaton Fire. The event moved to Loma Alta Park by 2025.

The Altadena Historical Society’s annual Juneteenth Celebration and Scholarship Luncheon takes place on Friday, June 19, 2026, at 12:00 p.m. Tickets are $35 per person, which includes lunch; no tickets will be sold at the door, and advance reservations are required at tinyurl.com/3hfztm49. The event will be held at Loma Alta Park, 3330 North Lincoln Avenue. Free street parking is available around the park. For more information, call 626-797-8016 or visit altadenahistoricalsociety.org.