West Haven votes to recognize Juneteenth, Plain City still doesn’t
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- The Utah Juneteenth celebration takes place at the Ogden Amphitheater on Saturday, June 18, 2022.
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- Utah Juneteenth Heritage Festival Director Betty Sawyer speaks during the Utah Juneteenth celebration at the Ogden Amphitheater on Saturday June 18, 2022.
WEST HAVEN — As Juneteenth looms, West Haven officials last week approved a resolution recognizing the state and federal holiday as a city holiday as well, one of the last holdout communities in Weber County to do so.
“I think that’s the right thing to do. I’m glad it’s been brought to the council,” City Councilperson Nina Morse said during the June 7 meeting when officials took action. Juneteenth — on June 19 each year — is next Monday.
One of Weber County’s 14 cities, though, still doesn’t recognize Juneteenth — Plain City — and Betty Sawyer says it underscores the need for champions of the day to redouble their efforts to spread the word about why it’s significant. Sawyer, head of the Ogden Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was a big motor in passage last year of House Bill 238, making Juneteenth a state holiday in Utah.
“The fact is, it is a state holiday. We should all embrace it, like we do all state holidays,” Sawyer said. A slate of activities is set for Saturday and Sunday at the Ogden Amphitheater in Ogden to mark the day, organized by Project Success Coalition, which Sawyer leads.
Sawyer, a Juneteenth booster in Utah for 30-plus years, has traveled around the state, visiting communities to explain the significance of Juneteenth. It will be a state holiday this year in 28 U.S. states, according to the Pew Research Center.
“Juneteenth for us is the second Independence Day,” after July 4, Sawyer said. African-American slaves, notably, didn’t receive freedom with the ratification on July 4, 1776, of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Juneteenth marks the end of slavery in the United States, more specifically the day — June 19, 1865, two months after the end of the Civil War — when a Union Army contingent informed a group of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. Word of the end of the war was slow to spread to some areas while the Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, signed by President Abraham Lincoln to free slaves, didn’t take effect in places controlled by the Confederacy.
President Joe Biden signed a measure in 2021 making Juneteenth a federal holiday, followed in 2022 with passage of H.B. 238, making it a state holiday in Utah.
Many Utah cities followed suit, making the day an observed municipal holiday for the first time in 2022. West Haven, though, didn’t, and City Manager Matt Jensen said last week’s action was a case of the city keeping pace with other locales.
Most Utah locales, he thinks, “have adopted it. In fact, we’re playing catch up,” he said.
Like West Haven, the City of Kaysville didn’t recognize Juneteenth last year, with officials in the Davis County city harboring apparent concerns about creating another day off for city workers, according to Kaysville Finance Director Dean Storey. Also like West Haven, though, the Kaysville City Council subsequently took action making it a city holiday starting in 2023.
“I think as time went on, we felt it was an important holiday to celebrate,” said Storey.
Plain City Mayor Jon Beesley didn’t immediately respond to a Standard-Examiner inquiry on why the city doesn’t recognize Juneteenth.
“All I know is, we took it to the mayor and he said no,” said City Recorder Diane Hirschi. She suspects the City Council will again take up the debate over city holidays in the near term.
Sawyer expressed no animosity toward locales that don’t recognize Juneteenth. In her view, it highlights the import of spreading the word about what the day means and represents.
“For us, that’s a part of the education journey,” she said. “It’s about educating and informing and giving them a place to come to the understanding. … I think it’s just a matter of time and having that conversation with them.”
Juneteenth activities at the Ogden Amphitheater, free and open to the public, go from 1-8 p.m. on Saturday and 12-7 p.m. on Sunday, according to Sawyer. She anticipates “African dancing, drums, Jazz bands, hip hop artists, stepping, of course great food.”
Within Weber County, Juneteenth is an official holiday in the cities of Farr West, Harrisville, Hooper, Marriott-Slaterville, North Ogden, Ogden, Pleasant View, Riverdale, Roy, South Ogden, Uintah, Washington Terrace and West Haven. The Town of Huntsville, staffed by part-time workers, doesn’t have holidays.
