A year ago, Reier Erickson held a largely private Juneteenth celebration at his home in St. Albans. He felt unsafe inviting the entire community because white supremacist posters were being put up around the city, Erickson said at the time.
Similar materials are still being posted in St. Albans, though seemingly less frequently in recent months, officials and activists said. And this year, Erickson, who is Black, has worked with other residents to organize what will be the first public celebration of the federal holiday in the city on June 19.
Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned that former President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation more than two and a half years earlier.
Sunday’s event is not sponsored or organized by the city government, but officials have created a poster and a webpage for the celebration.
It’s set to run from 2 to 6 p.m. in the Bishop Street parking lot, which is behind the St. Albans Museum and next to St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. Erickson said there will be free food, brief remarks and tables run by local organizations.
Several local activists said they’ve seen progress over the past year toward making St. Albans a more welcoming and equitable place.
They point to the formation of a city committee meant to foster equity and inclusion — an idea proposed by Erickson and other members of a local activist group called Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans. The committee, which began meeting this March, was initially hindered by one member, Keith Longmore, who repeatedly argued that the entity was unnecessary.
Last Monday, the St. Albans City Council voted to remove Longmore from the committee.
Activists say there’s still more work to be done in St. Albans.
A question of ‘whitewashing’
Several residents have publicly expressed frustration with City Manager Dominic Cloud’s decision last month to significantly edit a statement written by a member of the equity committee, for the city’s use, to respond to a racist shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which a white gunman killed 10 Black people at a supermarket.
Eliana Castro, a city resident who is Black and Latina, drafted the statement. She is an assistant professor at the University of Vermont who researches race and racism and is among the planned speakers for the upcoming Juneteenth celebration.
But the language the city published online was attributed to Cloud, not Castro — and it excluded what Castro had written about how the shooting targeted Black people, specifically. It also excluded Castro’s writing that “white supremacy” was a cause of the massacre.
“I understand that there is an element of people in St. Albans that don’t want to hear these words,” Castro said. “But all the same, I don’t think (Cloud) knows me if he didn’t know that I was going to say something to the tune of what I said.”
At Monday’s city council meeting, two residents spoke about Castro’s statement and the version that was posted to the city’s website.
According to Cloud, the equity committee asked the city to put out a statement after the shooting, and he decided to ask committee members for help writing it. He said that decision was influenced by a panel he’d attended that week on racial justice.
In response to a request from the committee’s chair, Leah Christopher, Castro volunteered. She said it wasn’t clear to her exactly how her statement would be used.
In her original 229-word statement, Castro wrote that “the murder of ten people, all of whom were Black, was rooted in anti-Blackness and white supremacy.”
The city’s statement, published on its website, was 89 words long, and did not include that line. It did, however, include Castro’s comments that “Americans were hunted and killed, based solely on their race, by a complete stranger in a premeditated attack.”
The city’s statement also called the mass shooting “the essence of domestic terrorism,” which was similar to language in Castro’s version.
Castro said the published statement “really left out the most important language.” Writing a statement in the first place was difficult because of her shared identity with the victims of the shooting, she said.
“What they published just condemned domestic terrorism. It didn’t condemn anti-Black racism, and a violent act of white supremacy,” she said. “That left me, really, wanting.”
Speaking to the council Monday, St. Albans resident Barbara Finch called the city’s published statement “nothing short of whitewashing.” She accused Cloud of “sanitizing the details of this woman’s honest and deservedly gut-wrenching reaction.”
Castro also said she believes her statement was whitewashed.
Jeffrey Nelson, another resident who spoke at Monday’s meeting, said removing specific language about people’s race from the statement was counter to the city’s efforts to be more inclusive.
“Having a statement that is devoid of the word ‘Black’ is not going to solve anything,” Nelson said.
According to Castro, Cloud emailed her before publishing the statement, thanking her for writing it, and saying that he was going to post it under his name.
The city manager wrote: “I’ve edited a bit for brevity and words I am comfortable owning,” according to a message Castro shared at Tuesday’s Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee meeting.
Castro’s draft statement, which she attributed to “St. Albans city leadership,” also asked residents to be “discerning” about the media they and their children consume and to disrupt white supremacist and anti-Black thinking among family, friends and colleagues.
Cloud said he chose not to publish those suggestions because he thought they exceeded the scope of what a city government should urge its citizens to do.
In hindsight, Cloud said he understood how his edits to Castro’s statement could appear as whitewashing. He agreed that the extent to which Castro’s words would be used was unclear, though said he ultimately decided to publish only words that he would use, and that he felt were appropriate for the city’s social media feeds and website.
He was hesitant to attribute the statement to “city leadership” without running it by more officials, he said, and wanted to get the statement up as soon as possible.
“I’m not an activist. I speak in a more measured tone,” Cloud said. “I’m a governmental official, and I’m accountable to other elected officials. So that structure embeds some caution in what I post on social media.”
He said that since posting the statement, he has been criticized both by residents who felt the statement did not say enough, and those who felt the city should not have said anything about the Buffalo shooting at all.
Cloud added that he thinks it’s important to note that the city made a statement in the first place when, as far as he knows, many communities did not.
“Show me another city manager in the state of Vermont who posted anything similar to what I posted,” he said.
He added that next time the city asks community members for help drafting a statement, he will make sure everyone’s expectations about its content and attribution are clear.
Castro said she also would appreciate better communication from the city going forward if she is asked to draft a statement again.
‘Caught flat-footed’
Erickson recalled an incident in May when his wife, Lauren Dees-Erickson, who’s running for the Vermont House this year, was sitting at a Main Street coffee shop when somebody leaned out of a truck and yelled the N-word at her.
One visible example of progress in St. Albans, in Erickson’s view: A banner put up over Main Street this month says “Celebrate Juneteenth!” and “Black lives matter.” It also includes the red, white and blue Juneteenth flag.
“Now, right where she was sitting, there’s a sign that says, ‘Black lives matter,’” Erickson said. “I mean, that’s huge.”
Cloud also emphasized the importance of symbols such as Pride or Juneteenth flags.
“A banner over Main Street doesn’t rectify centuries-old injustices,” the city manager said. “But it’s one place to start. And symbols, I think, reflect values.”
At a city council meeting in June 2021, St. Albans officials were criticized for not planning any public events to celebrate Juneteenth or Pride Month.
“The city was caught flat-footed,” Cloud said, recalling that meeting a year ago. Ward 6 Alderperson Chad Spooner said at the time that he felt the city “really messed up.”
Mayor Tim Smith ultimately signed two proclamations at that meeting, one recognizing June as Pride Month and the other recognizing June 19 as Juneteenth.
This year’s Juneteenth event is not funded by the city, though Cloud said he would be open to contributing city funds in the future, if that’s what community members want.
Asked about the city’s progress toward being more inclusive, Castro said she remains concerned by the presence of white supremacist posters. She cannot walk a mile in any direction from her house without seeing them, Castro said.
St. Albans has seen persistent posts made by the hate group Patriot Front, which is categorized as a white nationalist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The organization has placed similar posters around Chittenden County.
Zach Trate, a city resident, helps organize efforts to take down Patriot Front’s posts in St. Albans. He manages a hotline for people to report the posts.
Trate reports seeing fewer of them in recent months, which he said could be because the group has been weakened throughout the country. Last week, 31 men were arrested in Idaho whom police believe were linked to the group and planned to riot at a Pride event.
For Trate, the work other local activists have done, which led, among other efforts, to the creation of the equity committee and a public Juneteenth event, is key to pushing back against hate groups.
“From everything I’ve read, that’s absolutely the best way to go,” Trate said. “To make a statement that hate isn’t welcome here, and we will not be afraid.”
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story included the incorrect year for when enslaved people learned that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed.