Why Did Juneteenth Happen “So Fast”?(And How Can You Replicate That Success?)
Saturday marked the first new national holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was celebrated in 1986. People have remarked at how fast the Juneteenth Holiday was approved. Considering MLK Jr. Day was first proposed in 1968 (after Dr. King’s assassination) and finally signed into law by President Reagan in 1983 (and not observed until three years later) – well, to have Congress pass this bill, the President sign it and the nation celebrate it within a three-day span seems like magic.
Magic? Hardly. More likely, it was a combination of things: persistence, the will of the people, collaboration and great communication. And Spoiler Alert, those are the same things needed for any successful effort.
Persistence: Opal Lee, the self-proclaimed “little old lady in sneakers,” has been working on this effort for years. Some would say since an angry mob set fire to her family home in Texas in 1939. In fact, she marched 1,400 miles from her Texas home (at the age of 89!) to the White House in 2016 to ask President Obama to make Juneteenth a holiday. It didn’t happen but she kept at it.
Will of the People: So much has been going on in the past year that has focused our nation on race relations. Pile the pandemic on top of that and we need a reason to celebrate. Juneteenth has actually been celebrated for decades by communities of color – having it recognized as a legal holiday was the next step.
Collaboration: The US Senate approved this unanimously – when has that happened in the last decade?! And in the House, the vote was 415-14 – overwhelming approval. Again, unprecedented in my recent memory. But celebrating freedom seems like an “easy” win. Amazing what can be accomplished when we work together.
Communication: The slaves were freed by President Lincoln in 1863, as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation. It took more than two years (June 1865) before the people of Texas got word. You read that right. Two years. In 2021, word of this new holiday spread in 2 seconds! In fact, the world was able to watch the President sign the bill live. We can thank technology for that.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), said in a statement, “Making Juneteenth a federal holiday is a major step forward to recognize the wrongs of the past." I disagree. I think Juneteenth is the nation’s opportunity to celebrate something we actually did right – freeing the slaves. It’s Freedom Day. It’s Jubilee Day (as they used to call it.) Let’s not make it about race relations; let’s see it for what it is – the first time our nation took a bold step for Unity, for Equality, for Inclusion.
Even Ms. Opal said Juneteenth “should be a unifier.”
Persistence, widespread support, collaboration and communication – try that the next time you want to achieve something great. However, don’t expect it to happen overnight; Juneteenth didn’t.
If you need help garnering that community support, creating collaborative partnerships and telling your story, contact me.
