COVER STORY
A New Celebration Juneteenth comes to Stone Mountain By Donna Williams Lewis Elaine Vaughn’s earliest memories of Ku Klux Klan marches through Stone Mountain Village take her back to the age of 6. “We were kids and they never, never bothered us,” Vaughn said of the Klan marches and rallies that continued into the 1980s in Stone Mountain. “The only thing my mom would say when she found out the Klan was coming, usually around Labor Day, … was go to bed, come inside, keep quiet. We did that, had no problems.” Today, in the shadow of the mountain on whose top the Ku Klux Klan was rebirthed in 1915 and whose face bears the world’s largest memorial to the Confederacy, Vaughn is helping to carve a new legacy. She’s on the planning committee for the city of Stone Mountain’s first-ever Juneteenth Festival. Officially recognized in most
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states and a paid county holiday in DeKalb County, Juneteenth is an annual observance that celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S. Its name is a blend of the date it commemorates — June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally heard that the Civil War had ended, more than two years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had made them free. Vaughn is a lifelong, third-generation resident of Shermantown, a historic Black neighborhood in the village of Stone Mountain. The first church there, Bethsaida Baptist, was organized in 1868, and the neighborhood’s name refers to Union General William T. Sherman. “I’m just excited. I am so glad they asked me to be on the committee,” said Vaughn, 67. “The reason I’m glad they’re
JUNE 2021 | AtlantaSeniorLife.com
having this is so the generation that’s coming now can at least get a glimpse of what it felt like when our ancestors were freed … and even the adults, I hope it will give them something to think about.
It’s time out for separation,” she said.
‘An important day for all Americans’
Stone Mountain’s celebration is one of many Juneteenth events planned across metro Atlanta, as
promotion of the holiday grows around the nation. Juneteenth is an official paid holiday for state employees in Texas and several other states, but not in Georgia. Last year, DeKalb County commissioners voted unanimously to make Juneteenth an annual paid county holiday, effective this year. DeKalb Commissioner Mereda Davis Johnson, who sponsored the legislation, said her action was inspired by “everything that was happening in this country — the killings, the hatred, the meanspiritedness. It’s like some people would want to go back to the days of slavery.” She hopes to see Juneteenth become a federal holiday to recognize the contributions of enslaved people to the development of the U.S. and to remind everyone to appreciate their freedom. “We’ve seen how close that freedom is to being taken back,”
“The reason I’m glad they’re having this is so the generation that’s coming now can at least get a glimpse of what it felt like when our ancestors were freed … and even the adults, I hope it will give them something to think about. It’s time out for separation.”
“I think Juneteenth is being embraced because ... the country’s true Independence Day is when the last slaves were freed. So it’s not just an important day for the Black community, it should be an important day for all Americans.”
Elaine Vaughn
Mayor Pro Tem
Chakira Johnson
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