Sidney Cooper helped popularize Juneteenth in San Diego. This year's Cooper Family Foundation Juneteenth Freedom Festival is marred by his missing remains.
For 22 years after his death, friends and family of the longtime San Diego businessman, who was affectionately known as the “Mayor of Imperial Avenue,” visited what they believed was his final resting place at Greenwood Memorial Park and Mortuary.
Through a spokesperson, the cemetery said it was working to fix what happened and said the issue occurred under previous ownership. “He was a veteran, and he was all about the community,” Cooper-Jones said of the neighborhoods along Imperial Avenue, including Logan Heights, Mount Hope, Mountain View and Lincoln Park. “He loved that community — he had a house two blocks from Greenwood, on 38th and Imperial; he had a business on Imperial; he wanted to be buried on Imperial.”
Cooper-Jones said her father continued to celebrate Juneteenth each year when he arrived in San Diego as a teenager. He and Thelma, who was from New Orleans, met on a blind date. He worked as a barber, she as a beautician, and he opened a produce store. Their family’s Juneteenth celebrations grew, first with family and friends at Southcrest Park and later in the parking lot of his store.
Cooper-Jones said that when her father died, they held a graveside service, but they didn’t witness his casket being lowered into the ground.
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