Juneteenth will now be an official holiday in the Village of Essex Junction. The Board of Trustees voted unanimously last week to establish the holiday, which will be a paid day off for village staff.
“It was a no-brainer,” trustee President Andrew Brown said of voting to officially enshrine June 19 as a day for the village to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.
On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law, Union troops delivered the news to Black Americans in Texas that slavery had been abolished two years prior and that they were free. Juneteenth is the celebration of that day.
Making Juneteenth a paid holiday could be important from an educational standpoint, said Zoraya Hightower, the executive director of the social justice activist group Peace and Justice Center and Ward 1 city councilor for Burlington.
“It’s important to say Juneteenth is just as valuable of a holiday than any other, and maybe it’s even more meaningful because it covers a history we tend to not look at,” Hightower said.
Following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by white police officer Derek Chauvin in Minnesota in May 2020 and the ensuing national racial reckoning, the efforts to recognize Juneteenth picked up around the country. Many lamented that Juneteenth, along with other important events in Black American history, are often ignored in United States history classes and society.
Just a few days shy of the holiday in 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law officially making Juneteenth a federal holiday to celebrate emancipation.
Naming a day a national holiday is largely a ceremonial gesture save for federal workers who get the day off. However, the U.S. government does not create new federal holidays lightly. There are only 12, including Juneteenth. The last federal holiday was signed into law almost 40 years prior to the recognition of Juneteenth, when, in 1983, Ronald Reagan declared Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday.
At the time when Biden signed the bill, Vice President Kamala Harris said national holidays “are days when we as a nation have decided to stop and take stock and often to acknowledge our history.”
Speaking about creating the holiday in Essex Junction, Andrew Brown echoed Harris’ sentiment from half a year ago.
“We can’t move forward until we blatantly recognize these horrific behaviors of the past and say our community and society has screwed up and harmed generations of individuals,” Brown said. “Just like with any behavioral change, you can’t change until you recognize there is a problem.”
Forty-nine out of the 50 states, all but South Dakota, recognize Juneteenth as a day of observance. Six states — Texas, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Washington and Oregon — have made it an official holiday, meaning state employees get a paid day off.
Vermont became the 29th state to recognize Juneteenth as a day of observance in 2008. It designates the third Saturday in the month of June as “Juneteenth National Freedom Day.”
In the summer of 2020, Gov. Phil Scott proclaimed June 19, 2020, “Juneteenth Recognition Day.”
“Vermonters and Americans should mark Juneteenth with the same level of reflection, remembrance and celebration as all other national holidays celebrating freedom, liberty and human rights,” Scott wrote in his proclamation.
“We must do more to openly acknowledge that the struggle for equality only began with the Civil War, and openly confront and eliminate the legacy of slavery — the significant racial inequality and systemic racism — that continues to exist in our county and our state today,” he said.
Few other communities have followed the federal government in making it a paid day off. Essex Junction’s next door neighbor, the town of Essex, voted Nov. 1 to add the holiday to its list of paid days off. Many Vermont communities, however, did hold Juneteenth celebrations last summer.
“Municipalities across Vermont are evaluating how to properly recognize Juneteenth,” said Ted Brady, executive director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. “If they should have the day off as with other federal holidays, build celebrations into their yearly calendars or partner with community organizations. We’re seeing members do all different things.”
Correction: This story has been updated to include the town of Essex as a community that also has made Juneteenth a paid holiday.
