The City of Martinsville in Morgan County will see a Juneteenth celebration this year, but not everyone is optimistic about it.
“Our history…in Martinsville…yikes.”
“Is this for real?”
“Sounds like a trap.”
So read some comments under the event’s social media announcement, where users expressed skepticism that Martinsville would embrace a day celebrating the end of slavery in the U.S. Though others were hopeful that city residents will welcome such an event, comments doubting that Martinsville can shake its troubled history or dismissing the Juneteenth holiday dominated the post, published the morning of June 17.
The backlash brought Jeannine Lee Ferrer, a Martinsville resident who organized the event, to tears.
“That was very disheartening, to see some of those,” Lee Ferrer, a former Democratic candidate for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, told IndyStar. “There are still some people…who are going to say some people don’t belong if they don’t look like you.”
Lee Ferrer is aiming to throw the town’s first Juneteenth celebration at the Martinsville Area Senior Center on June 19. The event is open to the public but not associated with the city. Juneteenth, officially recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, commemorates June 19, 1865, when the last of the enslaved Black people of the Confederacy were freed by the arrival of Union troops in Galveston, Texas.
The celebration — which advertises live music, a soul food dinner and spoken word poetry — is drawing questions because of Martinsville’s history as “Sundown town,” or a municipality that deliberately excludes and targets minorities. Its reputation as a town unsafe for minorities stems prominently from the 1968 murder of 21-year-old Carol Jenkins-Davis, who was stabbed with a screwdriver in her chest while going door-to-door selling encyclopedias.
Kenneth Richmond, a Hendricks County resident with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, was arrested and charged with Jenkins-Davis’ murder in 2002, but a judge declared him, a 70-year-old with cancer, incompetent to stand trial. Richmond confessed to killing Jenkins-Davis on his deathbed four months after his arrest.
Lee Ferrer, who is Black, remembers the story of Jenkins-Davis well. As a college student at Ball State University, Lee Ferrer often made the trip from Muncie to Bloomington to visit a friend at Indiana University. She said her mother insisted she make sure her car had plenty of gas on the way so she could avoid a pit stop in Martinsville.
“She said, ‘Be very careful.’ And then she told me the story,” Lee Ferrer said. “By all means, never stop in Martinsville.”
Martinsville’s history was top-of-mind when Lee Ferrer moved there five years ago, but as a resident, she said she’s never experienced any racist encounters or attacks. That’s why, she said, she felt confident that locals would support a Juneteenth event.
And as other festivities commemorating American history — like President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair in Washington D.C. for the U.S. Semiquincentennial — gain traction, Lee Ferrer said she wanted to ensure every part of the country’s history was represented in her city.
“There may not be a huge contingent of African Americans that live here, but what a great way to maybe introduce some people to the culture,” Lee Ferrer said. “The world is a better place when we get to know each other and accept one another for who we are.”
Lee Ferrer said she reached out to both the City of Martinsville and the Martinsville Police Department about city representatives attending the event. A spokesperson for Mayor Kenny Costin’s office told IndyStar that, though Costin has a scheduling conflict and won’t be able to attend, he welcomes the Juneteenth celebration and is encouraged by how the city is evolving.
The Juneteenth event, Lee Ferrer said, will go on as planned, running from 5-8 p.m. June 19. Lee Ferrer hopes the celebration will become an annual tradition, and she set up a GoFundMe to raise money for a bigger celebration next year.
For this first time around, though, Lee Ferrer hopes the sheer existence of the celebration will prove to those who doubt Martinsville that city is ready to embrace the holiday.
“There are always going to be people like that, with evil in their hearts and violence in their hearts and racism and jealousy and hate,” Lee Ferrer said. “But I will always be the person that thinks that there is room for growth.”
Contact IndyStar Pop Culture Reporter Heather Bushman at hbushman@indystar.com. Follow her on X @hmb_1013.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: ‘Is this for real?’ Martinsville Juneteenth celebration raises eyebrows
Reporting by Heather Bushman, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Heather Bushman, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
