Juneteenth festival organizers focus on 'resilience' amid attacks on DEI initiatives
Juneteenth was established as a federal holiday in 2021 to recommit to "equity, equality, and justice," but this year the holiday comes amid a new political environment marked by a slew of Trump administration federal regulations against diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The holiday commemorates the June 19, 1865, emancipation of the last African American enslaved people in Texas in the wake of the Civil War.
Organizers of Juneteenth celebrations across the country told ABC News that President Donald Trump's push against DEI policies has led to some disturbances in planned festivities -- some of which took place last weekend and others that are scheduled to be held on Thursday and over the coming weekend.
Maliya Jones, whose family has been organizing a Juneteenth festival in San Diego for years, told ABC News that the National Endowment for the Arts, which has faced funding cuts under the Trump administration, initially granted her family's foundation, The Cooper Family Foundation. The foundation, which puts on the festival, was to receive a $25,000 grant for the 2025 fiscal year, as they have secured for past celebrations.
However, following the Trump administration's new anti-DEI regulations in February, they were notified in an email that they will no longer be receiving the grant, Smith said.
"Funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the administration's agenda. Your project, as noted, although, unfortunately, does not align with these properties," the email said, according to Jones.
Norman Harris, executive director of Juneteenth Music Festival Corporation in Denver, Colorado, has been organizing Juneteenth festivals for over a decade but said that this year has been the "most challenging" because 12 major corporate sponsors, who had backed the festival in the past, pulled their support over the past couple of months.
Asked if the companies provided a rationale for pulling out, Harris said they did not elaborate, but the loss of support came at the last minute and organizers they didn’t have time to “have those conversations.”
"What it made us do was to figure out on the fly, you know, how we were going to sustain this year's celebration," Harris told ABC News. "So what we decided on was that we'd have to shorten the normal two day street festival to one day."
The president's executive orders against DEI target both the public and the private sector.
Several legal experts who advise companies and institutions regarding their DEI policies previously told ABC News that while the Trump administration doesn't have the legal authority to mandate that private businesses abandon those policies, the executive order's language uses the threat of potential legal action against certain companies to discourage those practices.
"The current administration has made it very clear in as many ways as it could that it's no longer friendly to the idea that the country should continue to mark the racial history of the past as something affecting the present. They kind of want to wipe the history away and start from scratch," Jeremy Paul, a constitutional law professor at Northeastern University, told ABC News.
The president said in a March 27 executive order targeting the teaching of American history in cultural institutions that depictions of the U.S. as "inherently racist" are "divisive" and called on the institutions to instead "focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people."
"The expressed position of the current administration is very hostile to what they would call DEI or woke events, and certainly, Juneteenth is part of the effort on the part of the country to acknowledge the terrible legacy of slavery," Paul said.
Smith's family, which organizes the San Diego Juneteenth celebration, has been celebrating Juneteenth for decades, but she said that this year has been different because they have had to "navigate this new world" and "adapt" to the new regulations.
Smith said that this year's Juneteenth "healing" festival will still go on as planned this weekend because the family has been "blessed" to receive enough support from the community, but she expressed concern over fundraising in the coming years.
"Next year we don't know how that's going to look because funding is looking different," she said. "We're going to have to figure out how to scale back even more."
According to Paul, while there is "no obligation" for the White House, states, cities or companies to celebrate Juneteenth, these federal policies have no impact on its status as a federal holiday.
"This was established by statute, meaning Congress voted for it, and President Biden signed it," Paul said. "And that's not changing. There will be no mail that day. Federal offices will be closed."Harris said that while he was "disappointed" that the loss of sponsors led to the scaling back of the Denver festival this year, the spirit of Juneteenth has reminded him of the power of "resilience."
"Some of the challenges that African American communities have had decades past, centuries past, which resilience has been the common denominator -- that's helped us overcome the challenges," he said, adding that it has been an "honor" for him to help bring the celebration to the city each year.
Jones echoed this notion, saying that "our tradition is still the same."
"It's still going to be a Juneteenth Celebration for the community," she said, "and it's still going to be on a scale that is helping and educating and empowering the community."
