SPRINGBORO, Ohio — The first-ever Juneteenth Jubilee in North Park will be about healing, organizer Craig Salmon-Gilmore said Friday night. There’s a lot of it to do.

First, the reason for the holiday: Healing from the crack down the center of United States history. The enslavement of Black people in North America began before the U.S. declared independence and continued in some form until June 19, 1865, when Union generals arrived in Galveston, Texas, with long-delayed news of their victory over the Confederacy. This year will be the first that date — June 19 — is a recognized federal holiday.

And there’s healing from the many wounds of 2020, which brought a pandemic rolling over the country at the same time as a widespread movement for racial justice.

Salmon-Gilmore, a traveling salesman, spent the year haunted by the death of George Floyd, a Black man murdered by a Minneapolis police officer during an attempted arrest. He was afraid for a long time to leave home, he said.

When he did, he found other frightened people outside.

“When I stepped out, I realized there was a lot of discord and disunity in our community, and… not necessarily distrust, but there were a lot of competing voices and confusion,” he said Friday. “And one of the ways to bring people together is really just having conversation."

He went to City Hall looking for partners. Their race didn’t matter; he wanted allies who were ready to write history and find ways to understand one another better.

He found a group of about 100 like-minded people, but he envisioned a bigger event with more participants.

“I shared that with a couple of people and they looked at me like, ‘OK, big fella. Calm down now,’” he said. “But they got beside me and supported the vision."

The fruit of that vision is the Juneteenth Jubilee, which has city support, sponsors and free marketing from a private company. Attendees can play three-on-three basketball at the Y, get a tour of Springboro’s 27 Underground Railroad safehouses and attend a festival in the park with more than 30 vendors.

One of those vendors: The Warren County Health District, which will bring COVID-19 vaccine doses to offer anyone in attendance. Reaching the Black community is especially important for health workers, said district director Duane Stansbury.

“We know that the African-American community has not been getting the COVID vaccine at the same rates as other groups in Warren County and across the state,” he said.

Although Black Americans were more likely to become seriously ill or die of COVID-19 than other groups, some polls show they also have an elevated level of vaccine hesitancy.

In a poll conducted by the Commonwealth Fund and African-American Research Collaborative, Black respondents were most worried about discrimination from medical professionals and said it made them less likely to get a vaccine. The same study found nearly a third of its 12,000 respondents — all of whom were Black, Latino or Native American — were unwilling to vaccinate their children for fear of negative side effects.

“We know that kids are still getting this, unfortunately,” said Dr. Mary Carol Burkhardy of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. “In most cases, kids have slightly more mild symptoms, which is a great thing, but we don't know which kids are going to get more severe illness, end up hospitalized. Because of that, I think we have to be cautious."

Salmon-Gilmore agrees and said he was dismayed to see racial vaccine disparities.

He hopes encouraging people to get vaccinated at the Juneteenth Jubilee can provide a double dose of healing and hope for the future.

The Juneteenth Jubilee begins Saturday in North Park at noon.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Juneteenth is a recognized commemorative holiday in almost every state and the District of Columbia, and President Joe Biden signed a bill into law Thursday making it a federal holiday.

“We're becoming more diverse,” said state Sen. Reynold Nesiba of South Dakota, where the Black community has more than doubled since 2000.

But with that growth comes what many say is slow progress for inclusion.

“Diversity is the thing that, you know, no one can take away from us. But inclusion is an act, and we all play a part in it,” said Willette Capers, the Assistant Dean of Students for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Augustana University in Sioux Falls.

Capers and local business owner Julian Beaudion have spent the last year working with South Dakota state legislators to make that inclusion real.

They worked to make Juneteenth an official state holiday that would give state workers an additional paid day off.

“What Juneteenth really represents is the promise for all Americans to be free,” said Beaudion. “It's the promise of tomorrow, it’s the promise of the future.”

At the beginning of 2021, there were three states left that didn’t recognize Juneteenth as a holiday: North and South Dakota, and Hawaii.

North Dakota and Hawaii both approved legislation to honor Juneteenth as a state holiday this year. South Dakota was the last state left after two bills introduced in the state legislature to recognize the holiday failed.

Sen. Nesiba wrote one of those bills with collaboration from community members.

“There weren't any really strong opponents to this bill, just a general sense that they didn't want one more holiday. I think somebody said that it could be potentially divisive. I see it just the opposite. I think that it's an inclusive holiday that we can all celebrate the end of slavery,” said Nesiba.

Both Nesiba and community members felt disappointed when the bill did not even make it past committee hearings.

“I find it somewhat ironic,” said Nesiba. “I don't think there's any other state that has a 60-foot carving of Abraham Lincoln's face, the great emancipator himself carved into the side of a mountain. You would think that with a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln that we would be a state that would embrace the work and embrace the why Abraham Lincoln is on Mt. Rushmore.”

Beaudion hopes anyone who was opposed to this holiday will come to see that making Juneteenth a holiday is about more than the bottom line.

“As entrepreneurs, we understand the value of closing down on a busy day and we understand why business owners do not want to do it. However, they do it on July 4, they do it on other holidays. Juneteenth is just as important to us as July 4 is of the rest of America,” said Beaudion.

Even though the state legislature did not come to an agreement on Juneteenth, South Dakota’s governor did make a proclamation to ceremonially honor Juneteenth this year.

However, the community says a ceremonial day is just not enough.

These South Dakotans hope that next Juneteenth will be different—not just a federal holiday but one recognized by their home state.