Twenty-six years ago today, Judith McCray founded a media company and named it Juneteenth Productions. Maurice Bisaillon, Juneteenth Productions’ executive producer, said that before Juneteenth became a holiday, McCray was there, doing projects, films and commissions that center on social justice and civil rights.

“It says a lot that she was ahead of the game on that,” Bisaillon said. “I was Juneteenth Productions’ first employee. People were not only not talking about Juneteenth, people had no idea what Juneteenth was. We would get phone calls in the office and people would be asking, ‘Is this Umpteenth Productions?’ ‘Is this 13th Productions?’ They had no idea what Juneteenth was or how to say it. Just in naming her company that, she was accomplishing her goal — which was an opportunity to teach people about a history that centered around civil rights.”

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed the last enslaved African Americans that the Civil War had ended and that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation more than two years earlier had declared them free. President Joe Biden signed legislation establishing the day as a federal holiday in 2021.

“It was two years ago, when we got the law and people were calling me saying, ‘You helped do this?’ I’m like, ‘Nah, I’m just one of the people who know about the history of it,’” McCray said. “That’s why I named my company that, because I didn’t know about it 27 years ago. This is not about the party. ... This is about the lessons and continuing injustices that we’re supposed to be overcoming. We have the knowledge that Black people have been wronged and continue to be wronged.”

Last week, McCray, Juneteenth Productions’ CEO and creative director, was chosen as one of 10 recipients of the Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago award. Bisaillon nominated McCray, his media maker mentor. The awards, centered in areas of art, justice and media/storytelling, are part of Field’s ongoing investment in individuals’ and organizations’ efforts to address racial justice and systemic bias in Chicago’s marginalized and underserved communities.

The $50,000 award gives $25,000 for the recipient’s personal use and $25,000 for the affiliated organization’s general operations.

For McCray that means money toward her retirement and funds to help her company’s latest endeavor, “Change Agents,” a podcast that brings together emerging journalists of color and community activists and organizations to tell untold stories through a community lens.

The podcast is entering its fourth season, this one focused on reentry for the formerly incarcerated. Since it premiered in February 2021, 16 journalists have produced work that includes audio articles looking at workplace equity, tackling anti-Blackness and wraparound services for homeless youths.

When McCray is not spearheading that, she’s teaching social justice reporting, news documentary, writing for broadcast and media ethics classes at DePaul University. She teaches the history of racism and injustice giving context to journalism students who may not have had it during their history or political science classes. Something she tells her journalism students: Boldly tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience, seek sources whose voices we seldom hear, and avoid stereotyping.

From her family farm in eastern Iowa, on land her grandfather purchased after fleeing Jim Crow racism in Mississippi, McCray’s social justice media work has taken her to Sudan, Egypt, Kenya, Switzerland and Brazil and across America to produce documentaries such as “Nubia and the Mysteries of Kush” (about the excavation of Nubia along the Nile) and “Mississippi, America” (about law students and young lawyers recruited to free Freedom Riders who in 1964 volunteered to attempt to register as many Black voters as possible in Mississippi).

Bisaillon, Juneteenth Productions’ first intern, was a student of McCray’s when she was teaching documentary production and writing at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in the mid-1990s. That’s where the seeds of “Mississippi, America” were planted. He served as a researcher on the film, venturing to Mississippi in the summer of 1994 for the 30th reunion of Freedom Summer.

“What still resonates with me about this documentary was that there were all these people who put their lives on the line ... ordinary folks who felt it was time to do something,” McCray said. “To this day, it’s one of my favorite pieces in terms of resonating for me that it takes all these people to make even a little change. It certainly was a precursor to the 1965 Voting Rights Act.”

Looking back on how she became a producer/writer/documentary filmmaker/teacher/entrepreneur, McCray laughs at thinking she couldn’t make up her mind at a profession. When she was younger she wanted to be a fashion model or a truck driver, until her father sat her down and had a heart-to-heart with her about where her love of writing could lead her. The two choices were English teacher-professor or journalist, and McCray recounts her dad saying, “English teachers and professors don’t make much money.” With Jane Pauley and Barbara Walters on broadcast television, McCray sought to be like Walters.

“It was no more thought than that,” McCray said. “I applied to Northwestern, because of Medill, and Drake University. I got accepted into both and got full rides. Journalism always felt the right fit — always asking questions to find out what other people had to say.”

Susan Armstrong, McCray’s sister, said her sibling has always been extraordinary, having been voted “most likely to succeed” and class president in an all-white school district. Armstrong said McCray’s passion for social justice became evident when she organized a student march to “Ban the Krugerrand,” a protest against Northwestern University’s investment in the South African gold coin, while a student at Northwestern University.

“She finds the glory of people’s stories, and captures the stories in media to engage a wider audience,” she said. “Her produced stories about people, communities and movements gain traction and result in social change for the better.”

McCray honed her journalistic skills in Rock Island, Illinois, when an internship at a newspaper made her realize she was more interested in long-form, investigative stories that could be told in broadcast. Subbing for a vacationing host for a public affairs television show, she thought she had died and gone to heaven.

“That was everything I wanted,” McCray said. “It still is my most favorite moment. The name of the show was ‘At Issue.’ This was in the 1980s and affirmative action was changing again. I felt it was important to get people together on a panel to talk about how a very little change that had only gotten three lines of copy in the local newspaper was going to impact people’s lives. I loved that aha moment of watching people hear or see something I’d done. The people that I was showing or demonstrating their experiences and their perspectives that people didn’t know about, it changed their thinking, as well as changed, ideally, at some point their behavior.”

Under the Juneteenth Productions umbrella, McCray has done documentary-style media projects for educational institutions, nonprofits, health organizations — works mostly focusing on people of color or marginalized communities. She did a stint taking commissions for public television (WTTW) and public radio (WBEZ) in between projects. McCray’s work is why Bisaillon nominated her for the Field Foundation award.

Craig Rothman, a media producer and documentary filmmaking colleague, found McCray six years ago looking for diverse people with different points of view to help him with a Baha’i project. They’ve been friends ever since.

“The thing that Judith does so well is she has trained her mind and heart to be inclusive with points of view, diversity itself and the value of that. And she has no struggle with it in her heart and that clarity to me is what bonded us as friends. That’s to be celebrated,” Rothman said.

McCray’s son, Nathan Pollard, a project manager at the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, D.C., said she was the mom who gave him books to read and tasked him with producing book reports while his friends were heading to the beach in the summers.

“If there’s something important that needs to be told or done, she is very much: ‘I will get you from A to B to C even though all you have is A.’ And then she will be like: ‘Let me tell you about how it ties into things and get the story told and what the impact would be to other people.’ That drive I have seen my entire life, it never waned.”

He said her commitment to social issues of the world rubbed off on him. “I’m more systems-focused in my mind, so working in government to make the world a better place is my goal,” he said.

Bisaillon said McCray has worked her butt off for social justice, diversity in media and revealing the hard truths because it’s what she believes in.

“Judith was pointing out inequities in society when people don’t want to hear it. It’s not exactly a successful business model, but it’s what she believed was necessary,” he said. “She’s created a legacy.”

Elissa Yancey, a long-time collaborator and leader of the non-profit A Picture’s Worth, an organization focused on increasing narrative literacy and amplifying community-centered narratives, said Judith builds community wherever she goes.

“Her wisdom is in deep listening and even deeper understanding through her lived experiences, her exceptional journalistic work and her constant striving to learn and grow,” Yancey said. “She continues to push herself, and those around her, to challenge systems that have perpetuated injustice, particularly racial injustice, by centering community in all she does. Her direct, thoughtful leadership allows her to engage openly and honestly across divides and we need more of that.”

Ronald Bailey, McCray’s former African American studies professor at Northwestern University, has known Judith for more than 40 years. He said while McCray excels in areas like social justice reporting, mentoring and engagement, teaching, and creative productivity, it’s her “consistent focus on public policy issues—”grand challenges”—that are of pressing concern to the Black community and the broader society that is impressive.” Regardless the topic of her research, the results are often the same: “a sensitively crafted, careful consideration of key issues and a wonderful synthesis of these issues for the enlightenment of broad audiences, especially people of color.”

“Judith has important insights, incredible skill and energy, and a passion for using her life and her craft in the continuing quest to create a society that is more just and equitable for all of its citizens,” Bailey said.

And keeping to that tradition, McCray wants those celebrating Juneteenth to remember, before the barbecue and celebrations this year, to reflect on the continuing racism and systemic injustices that continue, and not just for the Black people community.

“We have a holiday to celebrate something, but we’re not really talking anymore about why was there ever a reason that these Black people would celebrate something called Juneteenth,” she said.

Journalists interested in “Change Agents” can email Maurice Bisaillon or Judith McCray at Juneteenth Productions, https://juneteenthproductions.com/

drockett@chicagotribune.com