Juneteenth will be a paid holiday for city workers starting this year. Lakeland’s City Commission unanimously approved a resolution Monday, adding June 19 to the 10 federal and state holidays that the city has previously observed, along with a “floating holiday” of each worker’s choosing.
Community activists Harlem Turner and Doris Moore Bailey advocated for several years for the elevated recognition of Juneteenth — a holiday that marks when the last group of enslaved people in Texas finally learned in 1865 that they were free, more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
However, it was resident Virginia Robinson who moved commissioners at their meeting on Feb. 6.
“Think of the Fourth of July — that’s what Juneteenth is to people who look like me,” Robinson said at that meeting. “That’s when we become Americans, free Americans. That’s when we began the road to equality. That’s our beginning.”
Commissioner Sara Roberts McCarley said, “Your eloquence, when we first started talking about this, and your gentility … the way you spoke about this was so moving … your message resonated with me for weeks after you shared it.”
Commissioner Mike Musick said he and his wife took an anniversary trip overseas recently and saw many historic markers and monuments.
“As I was over, looking at these historic marks — and some of them were hundreds and hundreds of years old — I thought how much I could enjoy what I’m seeing, and yet I didn’t partake in it, right? I’m coming well after the fact,” Musick said. “It just really hit me, while I was over there, that there is history everywhere that encompasses us, whether we’re part of it or not.”
Regarding the Juneteenth holiday, he said, “This is something that is way past due — both from a national level and a local level — as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t have an opportunity to partake in it by race or time or effort in the past; but I do get to be part of somebody who gets to say, ‘Yes, I’m behind it,’ in the seat that I sit in, because it’s important.”
Finance Director Mike Brossart said the holiday will cost the city about $170,000 annually, much of that in overtime pay for essential workers. But he said because the city has so many vacant positions, it can easily be covered with money that was allocated for salaries but not spent.
Commissioner Stephanie Madden thanked city residents who emailed the commissioners “giving us their stories and telling us why it’s important to them,” but especially NAACP chairman Terry Coney who shared Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?“
“It was important for me to read those words again, so thank you,” Madden said.
Mayor Bill Mutz added that while some people might want to cast the vote as a political concession to complaints, “This is not that. This is not that at all.”
“What this is, is an opportunity for us to recognize that for most of us, the Fourth of July became our Independence Day. But that’s not true for our African-American constituency. That’s what Juneteenth is,” Mutz said. “For those who think of this as some kind of political concession, it’s absolutely zero motivation. In fact, if that’s the way you look at this, then you miss the whole purpose of it.”
Turner and Bailey were among several community members who spoke about the resolution on Monday. Both expressed frustration that it took so long for the commissioners to come around. But quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bailey said, “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
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