It's been almost 10 years since my cousin Ingrid Scott-Weekley passed away from cancer. She was an extraordinary woman who taught me a lot about race in America. One of her most important lessons? Overcoming America's past is everyone's responsibility.
Recognizing Juneteenth is a small but important part of that improvement.
opinion columnist
LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports, and living life in America.
The fact that it was not a federal holiday until 2021 is a reflection of both racism and our uneasiness when talking about race, not an indication of the importance of the day itself. Case in point: Former President Donald Trump and current Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff couldn't be further apart politically, but neither of them knew about Juneteenth until recently.
That was no accident.
So teaching people about our collective past has to be equally intentional. And my cousin was committed to that intentionality.
Born in Mississippi during the 1950s, Ingrid and her family moved to Southern California to free themselves from the clutches of Jim Crow while she was growing up. After graduating from Santa Ana High School, Ingrid earned her law degree from UC Law San Francisco. In 1989 she became director of equal opportunity in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That's where we met.
At the time, she was trying to have the city's new major project named after Rosa Parks, but the initiative was met with resistance.
The problem was not so much the name but the location.
The city had hired Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, to oversee the $6 million park in the heart of downtown. City leaders envisioned the site as a statement to the world. And many did not want the civil rights movement to be that statement.
The sentiment among detractors at the time was that downtown was for everyone, and so they didn't want the Parks name to remind tourists of legislated intolerance.
The unspoken corollary: Buildings and streets named after Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks belong to the black community.
It was as if they thought the civil rights movement had nothing to do with white people.
Finally the measure passed 4-3. Instead of the city's crown jewel having a generic name (“Reflections” was one of the suggestions), it is named after a woman who risked her life in the fight for equality.
And that was considered controversial.
Just as the federal holiday for Dr. King was controversial.
Just like the nineteenth.
There have been attempts to make commemorating the end of slavery a holiday since 1996, when Rep. Barbara-Rose Collins introduced legislation. In 2016, teacher and activist Opal Lee walked from her home in Texas to Washington to draw attention to the day. She still remained in limbo until the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Even as that horrific event sparked global protests, President Trump planned a campaign rally in Tulsa over the holiday, before protests forced him to reschedule. Something about a white nationalist holding a political rally at the site of a horrific race riot on the day the enslaved were freed just felt off.
Trump was unaware that his own White House had issued a statement to mark the occasion. He told the Wall Street Journal that the controversy surrounding his Tulsa rally made Juneteenth “famous” and “it's actually an important event and an important moment. But no one had heard of it.”
That was in 2020.
The following year, Trump sued to have votes thrown out where many Black people live in an attempt to overturn the election he lost. And President Biden signed into law the Juneteenth holiday. Not as a reaction to Trump or to placate the black community, but because it is a day that should matter to all Americans.
That includes white people, something Emhoff told me can't be emphasized enough.
“There is a marked effort to erase history,” he said last week. “What I have seen are dark forces trying to divide us. Trying to put a gap between people and one of those gaps is diversity, equity and inclusion, as if diversity is somehow a bad thing. We have to go back. We cannot allow people to get tired of responding.”
This year he visited two southern cities, Raleigh and Birmingham, to commemorate Juneteenth and remind voters of the Biden administration's role in making it a federal holiday.
Polls continue to show that Biden could be losing support in the black community heading into November. The campaign is dedicating significant resources to spreading the word about what the current administration has accomplished to win the support of Black voters, such as the infrastructure bill, student loan forgiveness, historically low unemployment, and the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black candidate. woman on the Supreme Court. However, thanks in large part to the Senate, criminal justice reform and voter protection were campaign promises that Biden has yet to deliver. As a result, there is concern about apathy.
“We can do more than one thing at a time,” Emhoff said about recognizing victories while continuing to work toward our goals. “It's important to celebrate history and what it means right now. It is a way to explain to people what is happening now.”
“It doesn't matter what color you are, this whole story… impacts everyone.”
