Juneteenth is acknowledged as a holiday for county employees
The Anderson County Commission has voted to acknowledge the Juneteenth holiday on June 19 for county employees.
The commissioners voted at their Monday, Aug. 21, commission meeting. It passed 11 to four, with one abstention.
Commissioner Steven Verran made the motion, and Commissioner Robert McKamey seconded.
“If we don’t do this, we’ll make it look like we’re just offending the Black community,” Verran said.
The holiday, recently acknowledged by the state and federal governments, commemorates the announcement of the emancipation of slaves in Galveston, Texas.
Celebrations of the holiday have existed even before federal recognition, and the Green McAdoo Cultural Center has acknowledged it since 2021.
“I was the first one against this, but the federal government’s recognizing it; our state government’s recognizing it,” Commissioner Aaron Wells said. “Let’s not be ignorant.”
In addition to Verran and McKamey, Commissioners Wells, Shelly Vandagriff, Tracy Wandell, Sabra Beauchamp, Phil Yager, Joshua Anderson, Robert Smallridge, Tyler Mayes and Michael Foster voted yes.
The no votes came from Commissioners Tim Isbel, Denise Palmer, Jerry White and Anthony Allen. Commissioner Shain Vowell abstained.
Allen made a motion to instead create a Friendship Day for Anderson County, but no one seconded, so it failed.
“With Juneteenth, we are reaching back 158 years into the past to make hurt a holiday for today and the future,” he said. “Instead for today and the future, let’s make friendship a holiday for Anderson County.”
He described his proposal as “a broad holiday that does not look at someone because of their skin color, but really looks at them as an American.”
No other commissioners criticized Juneteenth as an idea, just as none of them seconded that motion. Instead, the others who opposed the county recognition of a Juneteeth holiday did so for fiscal reasons. An additional holiday means holiday pay for the county employees who are still working, and a day off for the ones who aren’t.
“As a fiscal conservative, 14 holidays is a bit much for me to swallow,” Palmer said. Vowell also expressed concern about the financial aspect, although he said he did not mind adding another holiday to the calendar.
Isbel said the money could instead go to the proposed Scarboro 85 monument, celebrating the desegregation of Oak Ridge Schools in 1955.
The commission watched a presentation from a group working to build that monument at the beginning of the same meeting.
While that proposal did not come to a vote, several commissioners expressed support for the monument after the presentation. The monument is proposed for A.K. Bissell Park.
“This isn’t about just Black people. This is about Black people and White people coming together to make our county great,” Allen said of the monument.
