A coalition of religious activists wants to build on the Juneteenth holiday. This year, only the second marking Juneteenth as an official holiday, its members are urging President Joe Biden to take an action that will focus more sharply on legacies of slavery and racism.
From jointly signed letters to Biden to a June 15 vigil at a Cleveland church to a June 16 news conference near the White House, the faith groups — and secular partners — are pushing Biden to use his power. They want him to issue an executive order to explore reparations.
The order would create an “expert commission” like the one called for in a bill languishing in the U.S. House of Representatives. H.R. 40, the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act,” was introduced more than a year ago.
“Juneteenth as a federal holiday is not reparations,” said the Rev. Marvin Silver, associate Conference minister of the United Church of Christ’s Central Atlantic Conference, who attended the D.C. news conference. “President Biden needs to go further and act now on this demand. A commission to study is a critical next step on the pathway towards reparations for people of African descent in this country. “In this highly charged, tense political environment and hate-filled culture, today’s event is a bold statement in the long fight to to ‘let justice roll.'”
Calling themselves the “Why We Can’t Wait Coalition,” the activists say they’re holding Biden to his campaign promises to “support a study of the continuing impacts of slavery” and “a study of reparations.” They include such diverse groups as the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, Color of Change, Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, Black Voters Matter, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Human Rights Watch and the UCC’s Justice and Local Church Ministries.
In their June 16 press conference near at the Elipse near the White House, and in an earlier letter, they said the executive order is urgent. “Many of the racial disparities that weigh this country down, and divide people in the U.S. from each other, are unnecessary and can be eradicated if we address the ongoing legacy of enslavement,” they wrote. “By righting our wrongs, we can make sure that all families in the U.S. get a fair chance to acquire land, to buy a home, to enjoy good health, and to live without fear about tomorrow.”
“Like the federal commission that investigated the forced relocation and wrongful incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II,” they said, “an H.R. 40-style commission can help pave the way for a critical and truthful reckoning and accounting for past harms and the present harms that flow from them.”
“Juneteenth,” they wrote to Biden, “presents you with an important opportunity to commemorate the end of enslavement while also recognizing much more still needs to be done to create equity and real opportunity for African Americans in the U.S. beyond declaring a national holiday.”
The Rev. Traci Blackmon, UCC associate general minister, speaking at the ecumenical June 15 vigil in Cleveland, used history to invoke the urgency and depth of the call. Titled “Repair and Redress: A Prayer Vigil for Reparations,” it drew some 70 people to St. Aloysius and St. Agatha Church in the Glenville neighborhood.
“This country has yet to atone for the atrocities visited upon generations of enslaved Africans and their descendants,” Blackmon said. And just officially talking about it, she said, would be an important first step. She named white supremacist mythologies that have “obscured our discussions of the impact of chattel slavery and made it difficult to have a national dialogue on how to fully account for enslavement in American history and public policy.”
"This is not just about money. It is about saving lives, saving legacy, saving history, and, dare I say it, saving souls.”