KEEP VIOLENCE OUT OF JUNETEENTH
Experts confirm that crime almost always increases when people have time off, whether that be weekends, summers or holidays.
On such days, people with extra time on their hands often find themselves bored and looking for something to do. In many cases, in many places, that time off gets filled with criminal activity.
Such activity is especially ironic when it comes on days to celebrate the founding of the country, the memorial of the country’s war dead, the celebration of thanks for all that we have in our country or the celebration of a savior.
People who study such situations attribute the increase in crime to various factors, including warm weather inviting more people to be outside and interact, the increased consumption of alcohol on holidays when people don’t have to work, and heightened emotions that holidays often bring on. Others say the proliferation of firearms in America contributes to gun violence, while some say less aggressive police tactics or a drop in the prosecution of misdemeanor weapons offenses play a role.
We hope Monday’s Juneteenth, a federal holiday proclaimed only two years ago to celebrate the day in 1865 when news reached Texas of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the Confederate states two-and-a-half years earlier, won’t become another such day. However, the signs are not good.
› What was described as a “peaceful gathering” to celebrate Juneteenth in Willowbrook, Illinois, suddenly turned violent early Sunday when a number of people fired multiple shots into a crowd. At least 23 people were shot, one fatally. (In 2022, 60 people were shot, including 10 fatally, during Chicago’s Juneteenth holiday weekend.)
› An early Sunday morning shooting at a party in an office space in downtown St. Louis, where officials said young people from the suburbs have been coming to hang out this spring, killed a 17-year-old and wounded nine other teenagers.
› A shooting injured and hospitalized two in Asheville, North Carolina’s Pack Square Park during the first day of a two-day Juneteenth Festival; all activities for the second day of the festival were canceled by the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County.
› Elsewhere, eight people ages 16 to 24 were wounded late Friday in a shooting at a pool party in Carson, California, south of Los Angeles; six people were injured in a Friday night shooting in Baltimore; a state trooper was killed and a second critically wounded hours apart in Lewiston, Pennsylvania, on Saturday after a gunman, who was later killed in a fierce gun battle, attacked a state police barracks; and two people were killed and two others injured when a shooter began firing randomly into a crowd Saturday at a Washington state campground where people were staying to attend a nearby music festival.
› In 2022, a 15-year-old boy died and three others were injured after being shot at a Washington, D.C., music festival, “Advocacy Festival Amplifying the Culture of Washington DC,” celebrating Juneteenth.
Unfortunately, the proclamation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday, did not start the history of violence on the day set aside to honor the end of the onerous history of slavery.
In three of the five mentions of the word “Juneteenth” in the predecessors of the Chattanooga Times Free Press in the 20th century, violence was the subject of articles, though none in Chattanooga.
› Three teenagers who had been arrested after deputies confiscated “marijuana, pills and a syringe” from them during a Juneteenth festival in Mexia, Texas, in 1981 drowned while law enforcement officers were ferrying them across a lake.
› In 1982, the officers involved in the Mexia, Texas, incident were on trial after being charged with criminally negligent homicide. They were acquitted.
› In 1986, during a five-day Juneteenth festival in Denver, a police officer was shot, and stone-throwing youths prevented his rescue until officers dispersed the crowd with tear gas. Police had to be called on three of the first four nights of the festival when brawls broke out among the youth, and several of the youth were hospitalized.
While Chattanooga police files did log several shootings over the weekend, none appeared to be related to Juneteenth celebrations, of which there were several.
Local festivities marking the day featured parades, music, movie/documentary screenings, food, Black-owned businesses and run/walks, one of which honored Opal Lee, who in 2016, at age 89, walked from her home in Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., in an effort to get Juneteenth declared a national holiday.
Rather than violence, the local activities captured the spirit of freedom and empowerment that the original Texas holiday, and the ultimate national holiday, commemorate.
We like the way The Associated Press put it on June 19, 1940, describing a Texas celebration which marked the first mention of “Juneteenth” in a Chattanooga newspaper: “People like Juneteenth; folks don’t have to work, just eat and dance and have a big time.”
That, indeed, is what freedom offers.