Last updated on 2021-04-08
A handful of Republican legislators want to recognize the end of slavery in the United States (or maybe just lay down lazy cover fire against criticism that their party is a bunch of apartheid-seeking racists) by putting Juneteenth on our official holiday calendar. Senate Bill 71, filed by Senator Jim Bolin (R-16/Canton), would observe every June 19 as a working holiday… which feels a bit like saying to those last slaves in Texas 155 years ago, “Hey, y’all are free… now get back to pickin’ cotton!” But most other states that have already marked Juneteenth on their calendars keep their office doors open as well.
Juneteenth would join the Battle of Little Big Horn, the Wounded Knee Massacre, the Bill of Rights, Joe Foss, POWs and MIAs, Purple Heart recipients, Vietnam veterans, American cowboys, and Peter Norbeck as things and people worth recognizing but not worth taking a day off work for. (The statute putting Cowboy Day on the fourth Saturday of July epitomizes South Dakota’s devious use of our own good nature against us by justifying its not-full-holiday status as “in keeping with the hard-riding work ethic of cowboys.”)
Senator Bolin avoids one gross error committed by Governor Kristi Noem last year in her hasty, one-off, embarrassment-deflecting Juneteenth recognition. The Governor tried contorting Juneteenth into a celebration of white generals and Union Army veterans who moved to South Dakota. Senator Bolin’s SB 71 simply says, “Juneteenth is recognized due to the fact that on June 19, 1865, the slaves in Texas, a geographically remote region of the confederacy, were officially informed by units of the United States military that the Civil War was over, that slavery in the United States had been abolished, and that the slaves were now free persons.” However, Senator Bolin matches Governor Noem in committing what appears to be another error, referring to the holiday as “Juneteenth Day.” While I haven’t found an authoritative style guide for Juneteenth, most references I find online refer to the day simply as “Juneteenth”, with no “Day” after. “Juneteenth Day” sounds like saying “July 4th Day.” So maybe when this bill comes to Senate State Affairs, we can get a motion to amend to strike “Day” from the title and text.
Those people (see what I did there) will never understand.
Juneteenth is a big celebration where I live now, but when I was growing up in Sioux Falls the NAACP had a combined Juneteenth and Independence Day picnic, if I am recalling this correctly. There is a good history of the South Dakota black community done in the 1970s in the link below:
https://www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-7-3/black-people-in-south-dakota-history/vol-07-no-3-black-people-in-south-dakota-history.pdf