Juneteenth: Politicization and Grassroots Movements

SSRN Electronic Journal

This study investigates the factors in uencing public support of Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday in the United States. Leveraging the Affect, Behavior, and Cognition (ABC) model, we uncover nuanced relationships that shape individual policy attitudes by adding family and community traditions to the model. Our ndings show that positive beliefs, emotions, and preferences for celebrating with family or friends increase support, while negative perceptions, commercialization of the holiday, and conservatism decrease it. Polarization perceptions reduced support, but only for the general population. Interestingly, our ndings reveal that family traditions of celebrating Juneteenth during childhood have varying effects across different racial groups, with a signi cant interaction between cognitive inputs and family traditions among African Americans. By considering cultural, cognitive, and emotional dimensions, this study contributes to the understanding of public sentiment toward historical event recognition and provides guidance for promoting unity and appreciation of Juneteenth's signi cance. This pioneering research lays the foundation for future studies exploring the dynamics of public support for commemorating historical events and advancing social justice through public policy.

America Celebrates , 2006

Paper presented and revised for the conference, "America Celebrates", October 2006, Sorbonne, Paris IV. Goes along with the pdf of the visual presentation.

2009

The convergence of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War and the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth calls our collective attention to an important turning point in American history. Of all the marks left behind by these iconic touchstones, perhaps none has had the profound impact of emancipation. From the moment Lincoln's January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation declared free all Confederate-held slaves, African Americans celebrated their liberation. They have been at it ever since. Yet today, if Americans have any knowledge at all about celebrations of the end of American slavery, their reference point is often Juneteenth. The term is a contraction for June 19 th , the date in 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger landed his troops at Galveston, Texas, and announced that slavery in that former Confederate state was ended and that all African Americans were free. Black Texans have celebrated Juneteenth more or less continuously since 1865, and in 1980 the state of Texas designated Juneteenth as an official state holiday.

Publ. by The University of Toledo College of Education & Allied Professions, with support from The Ohio Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1998

AHA: Perspectives on History, 2021

Co-authored with T.J. Tallie - the article explores how preserving the sanctity of Juneteenth - its reservation in Black peoples interior worlds despite its federalization, as vital to Black freedom and self-determination.

Review of Croatian history, 2021

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia’s (CPY) rise to power in 1945 was followed by a period of fundamental socio-political changes that encompassed all aspects of life. In order to establish a complete political and ideological authority, the government attempted to suppress all elements which, in their view, were not aligned with the doctrine of the Communist Party. As a result, everything that was perceived as remnants of the old socio-political order was marginalised, such as religion, tradition and customs. Moreover, reinterpretation of the past also took place, as well as creation of new rituals and Tito’s cult of personality. Accordingly, a completely new calendar of official, state holidays was established, deprived of any national or religious tradition. One of those holidays was May Day, which was celebrated for two days and whose purpose, like most other holidays of that period, was to create uniqueness of feelings and actions in society, focusing on the working class, social...

While the U.S. celebrates Labor Day (another telling instance of the ideological meaning of American 'exceptionalism') on the first Monday in September, May 1 st is recognized around the world as a workers' holiday, a global (or international) day of solidarity between workers of all nationalities. It was bound up with the struggle for the shorter workday-a demand of major political significance for the working class: "Eight hours for work-eight for rest-and eight for what we will." Thus, in many parts of the world today is the true "Labor Day." The auspicious nature of this date goes back to celebratory spring festivals and is still an excuse for Morris dancing: in the words of Emma Goldman, "If I can't dance, I won't be part of your revolution!" Eric Hobsbawm writes that "From the start the occasion attracted and absorbed ritual and symbolic elements, notably that of a quasi-religious or numinous celebration ('Maifeier'), a holiday in both sense of the word.

Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 2003

Most research studies of news assume a bias toward the extreme, the unusual , and the new. However, much of the content of newspapers consists of the routine and the predictable. Using a collection of articles from the New York Times sampled from 1852 to the present, this paper examines news about one subject, national holidays, with a view to explaining the pragmatic functions of such formally unnewsworthy articles. In the national holiday news cycle, the newspaper first announces or forecasts the observances, and after they have taken place the public response is evaluated for enthusiasm and decorum. The standard of behaviour is reinforced through small human interest stories that contain inferential gaps encouraging readers to draw on their knowledge of human conduct. The basic principle being inferred is politeness toward the nation, in the sense of respecting its positive face by anticipating and following its wishes, and respecting its negative face by avoiding challenges and focusing on citizen responsibilities rather than citizen rights. The result is news stories that violate some of the most important "hard" news values previously identified by researchers, by being predictable , ambiguous, static, and generally "good news". The analysis also shows how news which is apparently free of conflict can prepare readers for future consumption of conflict-oriented news.

This article is a study of the national holiday of 12 October, one of the most long-lasting and least transitory of the symbolic components of Spanish nationalism. Transnational in nature, this celebration of Spain's existence constitutes an exception among similar national holidays, in that it is based upon the country's role in the Americas and nostalgia for empire as founding elements of national identity. By analysing the changing ways in which this anniversary was celebrated in the course of the twentieth century, in rituals and language, the article highlights both the different imaginaries that were evoked and the roles played by particular actors and institutions in different stages of the construction of the national state and the definition of the regional and local identities of which it is composed. Our analysis of the progress of this celebration, from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the present day, as first Fiesta de la Raza, then Día de la Hispanidad and now just 'National Day', suggests that its durability, which has been maintained for nearly a century , stems from the notably ductile nature of the myths associated with it. Adaptable to regimes and political challenges of varied kinds, this commemoration melds together the inheritance of liberalism, the national-Catholic tradition and 'regionalized nationalism', all of which have been key elements in Spanish political history in the twentieth century.

Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism, ed Yifat Gutman, Jenny Wüstenberg et al., New York: Routledge, 2023

In many nations, national holidays have become, like monuments, a site of memory activism, as various groups contest how the past should be commemorated on the national calendar. In this chapter, I approach the Australian #changethedate campaign as a form of grassroots memory activism (Gutman, 2017a), in which activists strategically mobilize contested Indigenous memories of Australia’s past to bring about public debate and a wider understanding of the ongoing effects of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples in the present. Whereas memory activists typically work “outside state channels to influence public debate and policy” (Gutman 2017a, pp. 1–2), what distinguishes the #changethedate campaign is the role that some local governments have performed as drivers of the campaign. This case study suggests the need for greater clarity of the category of the state in memory activism, which can include multiple layers of government with differing positionalities and orientations .