Communities gathered in person and virtually across the state on Friday to commemorate Juneteenth, as top state officials marked the day and the House passed a resolution, with some contention.
In Essex, at least 200 people stood vigil at the central Five Corners intersection. Hundreds of revelers in Montpelier lit sparklers and danced on the Statehouse lawn. In Wolcott, children blew bubbles and attendees cheered at every mention of Juneteenth as a puppeteer recounted the history of the holiday, which honors the day the news of emancipation reached the last enslaved people in the country.
“I’m so happy about this,” said Laura Smith, one of the organizers of the riverside event in Wolcott. “I just did this because there was no positive Black messaging.”
Smith, who is Black, said it can be isolating living in this overwhelmingly white area at the edge of the Northeast Kingdom. But the showing Friday night was comforting.
“It is nice to know that your community will rally behind Black issues,” Smith said.
Juneteenth arrived this year as people have taken to the streets across the country for weeks, calling for an end to racial injustice. In Vermont, where vigils and protests in small towns and cities have drawn crowds of hundreds and thousands, the nationwide movement sparked by the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd has trained focus at the community and state level on addressing systemic racism and police budgets.
“There is more than one independence day in the U.S.” Rep. Kevin “Coach” Christie, D-Hartford and chair of the state’s Human Rights Commission, said at Gov. Phil Scott’s press conference on Friday.
The governor dedicated the first portion of his three-times-a-week press conference — typically devoted to Covid-19 news — to commemorating the 155th anniversary of the day in 1865 when in Galveston, Texas, enslaved African Americans learned they were free.
Christie described the holiday this year as “a celebration of sadness,” both devoted to celebrating the day, while acknowledging the legacy of racial injustice that persists.
“Systemic racism exists, as we see,” Christie said. “Now is the time to reaffirm our commitment to the mitigation of systemic racism in Vermont.”
Xusana Davis, the state’s racial equity director, spoke of the importance of listening and learning from history.
“I think for a lot of us, the remembrance of Juneteenth highlights the fact that certain histories in our nation have been suppressed, or forgotten, either intentionally or unintentionally,” she said.
On a recent call, she said, a white man said that he would like to be a good ally, but that it was not his moment. But Davis said it is a key time for white Vermonters.
“It is perhaps more your moment than anyone else’s because as people who wield outsized, and often unearned power and privilege in our society, it’s especially important and necessary that you be the ones to exercise that privilege in a way that makes things more equitable for everyone,” she said.
Scott cited the vandalism around the Black Lives Matter street mural painted in Montpelier last Sunday as evidence for the need to better understand the history of racial inequity.
“This opportunity is important because we know, 155 years later, that we still have to finish the work that was started,” Scott said. “We need to look no further than the vandalism on State Street just last weekend to remind us that racism and discrimination, are still far too prevalent in America today and in Vermont.”
House Juneteenth resolution
The Vermont House on Friday passed a resolution commemorating Juneteenth. But the resolution drew opposition from many Republicans, who said they would have supported it if it didn’t criticize President Donald Trump.
Christie addressed the “mixed emotions” of the holiday this year to his fellow members of the House.
“So we celebrate, on one hand, and let us remember systemic racism exists. And as we see, now is the time to reaffirm our commitment to the mitigation of systemic racism in Vermont.”
It passed in a vote of 128-17, with nearly half of the Republican caucus voting against it.
The document calls President Trump’s tweets in reaction to Floyd’s death “highly inflammatory and racist” and says that he has advocated for “a much-criticized militaristic response.”
“All House Republicans were hopeful we could vote for this resolution today, but cannot in good conscience participate in trying to match President Trump’s deliberately provocative and inflammatory rhetoric with more of our own deliberately provocative rhetoric,” said House Minority Leader Pattie McCoy, R-Poultney.
“We should be setting an example as a way forward, and the provocative sections of this resolution, I’m afraid, are not the way to do that.”
Other Republicans echoed McCoy.
“I have served as a legislator for six years,” said Rep. Bob Bancroft, R-Westford, “and today, Madam Speaker, you have allowed this body to sink to a new low.”
Many Democrats spoke in support of the resolution.
“I believe that silence is complicity,” said Rep. Marybeth Redmond, D-Essex. “As a patriotic white American, I have a responsibility to name and call out the racism that our president foments in the national conversation, keeping white supremacy emboldened and entact.”
Rep. Charen Fegard, D-Berkshire, said that her great-grandfather was a member of the Klu Klux Klan in Texas.
“I cannot do enough in my one life to address the harm that at least one of my own family members, and all of his ilk have wreaked upon a people for no reason other than the color of their skin,” she said.
Events across Vermont
As racial justice demonstrations have brought Vermonters together across the state for weeks, events devoted to commemorating Juneteenth happened around the state on Friday. People planned to gather in downtown Springfield and in Montpelier. Amid ongoing concerns of the spread of Covid-19, Hartford opted to hold a virtual event, slated to feature speakers and performances over Zoom.
At least 200 Essex residents and surrounding community members lined the sidewalks of the Five Corners intersection and stood in vigil as cars passed, signaling their support with a honk of a horn, to commemorate Juneteenth.
Kelly Adams, the lead organizer of the event and a member of Essex Resists, a group that was formed in the wake of the election of President Donald Trump, said although Juneteenth is meant to be a more joyous holiday, today’s event was more than that.
“We’re here today to honor that holiday but acknowledge that a lot needs to be done,” Adams said. “I feel like, in the United States, we’re trapped in a conversation that is operating at the individual level, like, is that person or is that person racist, instead of really looking at racist systems that have perpetuated racism over many centuries.”
Adams is looking beyond public demonstrations, encouraging others to attend the next Selectboard meeting Tuesday to learn more about how the police interact with the Essex community.
Chittenden County Senate candidate Kesha Ram, who attended the event, said she wants to build in more oversight into policing across the state.
“Number one, we have almost never questioned police and their budgets, and yet we’ve questioned almost everything else in our state and local budgets,” Ram said.
Ram added that this moment in the United States feels different than others in the past when frictions between police and the public have bubbled to the surface.
“It seems like there are a lot more white folks building relationships, meaningful relationships with people of color and Black folks, saying, ‘How can I understand your entire life experience?’” she said.
At 6 p.m. demonstrators held up yellow postcards each adorned with the name of Black Americans who had lost their lives at the hands of the police.
Then, the crowd took 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence.
Meanwhile, in a riverside field off a back road in Wolcott, kids bounded and blew bubbles as drum music rang out from speakers in the grass.
By the edge of the clearing, people grouped along a line of stencils and spray paint cans to prep wooden boards with slogans: Black Lives Matter, Rise Up.
A puppeteer explained to the crowd of more than 60 the history behind this holiday. At each mention of Juneteenth, the onlookers rattled shakers and cheered.
Smith, who helped organize the event, said that it was comforting to see the gathering. Especially, she said, after the confrontation at a recent anti-racism protest in nearby Craftsbury — where, as Seven Days reported, an armed man and two teenagers showed up in a pickup truck flying a Confederate flag.
Sha’an Mouliert, a St. Johnsbury racial justice advocate who spoke Friday, called the turnout a start. But Mouliert, who is Black, wonders what comes next.
“I don’t know if they understand the connection between the celebration,” she said of attendees, “and the legacy that brings out George Floyd’s situation and the murders after that.”
