If Confederate Memorial Day is a Kentucky holiday, then Juneteenth should be one, too
When reading WKYT’s recent story about how Kentucky’s Republican supermajority neglected (whoops!) to make Juneteenth a state holiday, being too busy or too distracted in taking away a woman’s right to choose or privatizing public schools, I remembered a line in Calvin Trillin’s book “An Education in Georgia,” about the desegregation of the University of Georgia in 1961.
When a white professor at Georgia calls the N.A.A.C.P., the N.A.A.C., Trillin remarks, “It seemed to me that the dean’s courtliness was slipping; white Southerners often have difficulty with the names of Negro organizations, presumably on the theory that if they are mispronounced often enough they will go away.”
It’s easy to imagine a similar scenario in Frankfort. “June wut?” say the majority caucus leaders, shaking their heads as they slipped House Bill 133 and Senate Bill 318 —which create Juneteenth as a state holiday — under a stack of other, much more important legislation so that by the end of session, it was far too late.
It’s a missed opportunity on the part of the GOP. What could be easier than the Party of Lincoln celebrating the end of slavery by creating a state holiday? Instead of telling Black people you’re on their side by giving more white people access to private schools or rich people bigger tax breaks, why not recognize Juneteenth by making June 19 a state holiday? Kentucky has some interesting ties to the holiday, too; Union General Gordon Granger, who announced emancipation in Texas on June 19, 1865, thereby creating the first Juneteenth celebration, is buried at the Lexington Cemetery.
One year without passing those bills looks careless; two years, the picture clears. In 2020, WKYT reports Senate President Robert Stivers declared in a statement that he was all in: “As the birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln, it is only right that Kentucky recognizes the day that his Emancipation Proclamation reached the final corner of the former Confederate States and freed the last of the southern slaves.”
He apologized last year, and this time around, said that because the Juneteenth was made a federal holiday last year, Kentucky already recognizes it. “I encourage all Kentuckians to celebrate this significant turning point in American history,” he said.
So if we already celebrate, what’s the harm in making it officially a state holiday? It doesn’t mean state offices are closed; the governor gets to decide that. It’s only symbolic, but symbols are important. Plus, it would balance out other state holidays still on the books. Guess which ones? Robert E. Lee Day on Jan. 19 and Confederate Memorial Day on June 3.
Gov. Andy Beshear has written yearly proclamations honoring Juneteenth and said he has urged the General Assembly to make it official.
“By honoring Juneteenth as a state holiday, we as a commonwealth would stand united in acknowledging the end of our nation’s greatest injustice and commit to bringing real, impactful change in the days to come,” he said in a statement.
Of course, Kentucky declined to ratify the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery) in 1865, waiting to do so until 1976, when it also ratified the 14th and 15th Amendments (birthright citizenship and giving Black men the right to vote). So we don’t exactly have a stellar record on these sort of things.
Waiting until 2022 to recognize Juneteenth seems like an embarrassingly long time, but not quite as bad as 2023, which is now the soonest it could happen.
This story was originally published June 15, 2022 at 1:36 PM.
