Commission divided on whether county workers should get paid for Juneteenth holiday
Sedgwick County commissioners are split over whether to make Juneteenth — a federal holiday celebrating the end of Black slavery — a paid day off for county workers.
At a meeting this week, two commissioners, Sarah Lopez and Lacey Cruse, committed themselves in favor of adding Juneteenth to the list of federal holidays that local workers get.
Commissioner David Dennis expressed strong concern over the cost of adding another holiday to the county mix, calculated at $700,000. Commissioner Jim Howell suggested giving employees the option of taking Juneteenth instead of another holiday.
Commission Chairman Pete Meitzner was absent from meetings this week while representing the county at transportation conferences in Las Vegas and Detroit. He said in a text message that he wants more information before deciding, primarily because Juneteenth isn’t a state holiday and the courts will remain open, which could cause operating difficulties in their shared building.
Juneteenth — a shortening of June 19 — marks the day in 1865 that federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas and Union Gen. Gordon Granger issued a proclamation that all slaves in Texas were now free and to be accorded equal rights under the law.
President Abraham Lincoln had issued his Emancipation Proclamation 2 1/2 years before and the confederacy’s commander, Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses Grant two months before. But slavery had continued in Texas unabated because it was on the western fringe of the Civil War and there was no significant Union presence to enforce emancipation until Granger arrived.
Juneteenth has been continuously celebrated in Texas ever since and Texas made it an official state holiday in 1979.
Observance expanded beyond Texas and it was proclaimed an official federal holiday when President Joe Biden signed a congressional bill into law on June 17 this year.
Former commissioner and state legislator Melody McCray-Miller, the last African-American commissioner, who served 1995-1999, said she thinks the time has come to make Juneteenth a county holiday as well as a federal one.
“It would improve out knowledge and acknowledgment of our very tumultuous and racially insensitive as well as unjust background,” said McCray-Miller, now an instructor at Wichita State University.
The significance of the holiday is “not only how it relates to defiance of the South, of the Confederacy, but how from a legal perspective the Emancipation Proclamation was simply words on paper.”
When Lincoln signed the document, it applied only to slaves in the states that were in rebellion, which weren’t under his control. Slavery wasn’t formally abolished nationwide until the 13th Amendment was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865, six months after Juneteenth.
McCray Miller said she didn’t know about Juneteenth until she moved to Houston in 1977.
“It’s big in Texas,” she said. “Once I moved back [to Wichita], which would have been in ‘86 it was very small at the that point. But it just continued to grow and grow and grow . . . This year Juneteenth was very large, very well attended. It was pretty phenomenal.”
County Manager Tom Stolz said he’ll prepare a report and bring it back to the commission with four options:
▪ Adding it as an additional holiday, with the county picking up the extra cost.
▪ Substituting it for another holiday on the county calendar.
▪ Creating a floating holiday that employees could take on June 19th or some other day of the year.
▪ Giving employees and managers the authority to work out their schedules with a choice of taking Juneteenth instead of another paid holiday.
This story was originally published October 14, 2021 at 4:09 AM.
