We are thrilled to have Cassandra Harris-Lockwood join us in presenting on the significance of Juneteenth and the Fight for Freedom.
Cassandra Harris-Lockwood was born in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capitol in 1951. Her family moved to Utica in 1954 and to Marcy in 1956 where she grew up in the country attending local schools. Cassandra was very active in student government and social activism from an early age. She graduated from high school in 1969 and attended Kirkland College. While a college student CHL became the first female construction worker in NYS. She graduated Kirkland in 1974 with a B.A. in Fine Arts and Dance. From there she worked for several years in NYC in the fields of the performing, martial and healing arts. Cassandra returned to the Utica area in 1979 to marry attorney Stephen L. Lockwood. Since then she has worked extensively in the inner city to help improve the lives of the people who live there. In 2002 Ms. Harris-Lockwood founded For The Good, Inc. a not for profit, that publishes the Utica Phoenix, a monthly news magazine and operates the Study Buddy Club, and the Community Gardens. In 2008 Harris-Lockwood mounted the Wonderful Wizard of Was, an original musical she wrote and produced, at the Stanley Theater. Harris-Lockwood has been an organic gardener for over 30 years and designed the urban gardening system now in place in Utica. Cassandra sings in the choir at St. Joseph’s St. Patrick’s Church, practices Natural Healing and Homoeopathy and is a guitarist singer songwriter. In 2012 she founded and developed the Oneida County Black History Archive with Dr. Jan DeAmicis and the late Dr. Paul Young of Utica College. In 2018 CHL donated the Archive to Hamilton College where it is now a part of the permanent collections of the Burke Library. Also in 2018 she bought two dark AM radio stations, WRCK and WUSP and created Phoenix Radio, Inc. She now operates WUSP 1550 AM and W238CA FM 95.5FM The Heat and leases WRCK AM and 1480 FM to a Christian broadcaster. This move makes CHL the first and only American woman to build a radio station from the ground up. She hosts a daily talk show, the Hot Seat, at 5PM Monday through Thursday. Cassandra and Stephen live on a small horse farm in Clinton, NY. They have two grown sons, Gabriel Lockwood and Kekoye Sagnia