Buffalo Victim’s Son Wants Juneteenth to Be a Call to Action

The son of 86-year-old Buffalo massacre victim Ruth Whitfield has told The Daily Beast that he hopes this year’s historic Juneteenth celebration will serve as a call to action to those in power around gun control and race relations in the U.S.

“We’re not going to go quietly into the night,” declared Garnell Whitfield Jr. “We built this country. We deserve to be treated with equity, with humanity and we demand it. We’re not asking for it. We’re not begging for it. And we intend to do something about it”

“It’s pretty ironic that we sit in 2022 celebrating our freedom from slavery, but we’re not celebrating our equality,” he said. “This proliferation of white supremacy, proliferation of inequities within our society, inherent in our society, the struggle continues.

“We understand that we've got a long way to go. Just like with the gun legislation—we have to celebrate that something’s being done—but it’s far from what needs to be done. And so our work continues.”

Whitfield said Buffalo’s Juneteenth will be bittersweet for him as it will be the first time his mother will not be watching the former fire commissioner march from the sidelines.

“You know, my mother stood in the crowd and cheered as we walked by every year. 34 years in the fire department and she never missed the parade,” Whitfield told The Daily Beast. “She won’t be there in the crowd this year. So many others won’t be there in the crowd this year. And so, you know, it’s a memorial to them that we come together. Not just to celebrate, not just to have fun, but to vow to work to bring about substantive change.”

On Sunday, Buffalo’s Black community will be celebrating their 47th Juneteenth, one of the largest celebrations of its kind in the nation.

The holiday, first celebrated in Texas, marks the date—June 19th—that enslaved African Americans there were told they were finally free.

This year’s events will be particularly important organizers say, coming after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic and just one month after a racist gunman murdered 10 Black community members at East Buffalo’s Tops supermarket.

On Wednesday, United States Attorney General Merrick Garland visited with shooting victims and family members and announced that federal prosecutors have brought hate charges against the gunman.

But for Buffalonians, Juneteenth and Black liberation have deep roots, from far before presidents in Washington D.C. paid notice to the June event.

Murray Holman, a member of the Juneteenth board, told The Daily Beast that the organizers wanted to acknowledge the victims of last month’s massacre while still allowing locals to enjoy a fun day out with their families.

Holman—who runs the Stop the Violence Coalition in Buffalo and is head of security for Buffalo Juneteenth—was one of the first community members at the scene of the shooting last month.

“It is a joy to see families come up to see the children marching on this day. That’s a highlight itself—the new generation taking on the task for the old generation. It’s not one thing that [sticks] out. It is just a powerful moment.”

Local Pastor James Giles said while it is impossible to dismiss the trauma and tragedy of May 14, he hopes the Juneteenth celebrations will be a “counter effect” to the massacre.

“If everybody has a good time they’re going to spread that and that’s what the hope is. That’s what the hope is for me,” he said.

This is the first year that Juneteenth will be a federal holiday—signed into law by President Joe Biden last year following nationwide protests against racist policing and police brutality in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

Jalonda Hill, the founder of local nonprofit Colored Girls Bike Too, says the historic event will be a special moment for Black people in Buffalo, which she says has “a very powerful and dynamic history.”

“If you look at history you had Harriet Tubman, who was in Buffalo. You had people like Frederick Douglas, and the underground railroad and its connection to Canada. You had a lot of safe spaces specifically for the underground railroad but you also had the Green Book,” she said, referring to places where Black families could safely stay the night.

“I think right now making all of these different connections to Black history, to mass shootings and racist terrorist attacks, and how it connects to that history but also to Black culture and how we celebrate and how we grieve… to make those connections and then reach solutions that materialize into systemic change” said Hill.

Hill says that this year, Juneteenth “must represent real change in the form of reparations.” She believes direct compensation must be paid to those descended from enslaved Americans and called on allies to support Black-led businesses and nonprofits.

“It’s only then when we can see true, true, true, Black joy. I mean, we have it right now of course because you can never really keep the Black community down. But I think that it’s time for Black people to be truly liberated in this country and a good start is like reparations and getting what we’re owed. ”

Dakari Singletary, 27, who will attend the celebration to reach out to youth for his programs at nonprofit Candles in the Sun —which runs a variety of initiatives and mutual aid for underprivileged Buffalonians— looked forward to celebrating and eating at his favorite jambalaya food truck, but echoed Hill’s hope that real change will overshadow any empty symbolism this weekend.

He noted Buffalo’s segregation and redlining, and the previous apathy of white organizations to Juneteenth.

“Black people in Buffalo have always had to be resilient,” said Singletary. “I think this tragedy did more for white Buffalo than Black Buffalo. We already knew what existed,” said Singletary. “It shouldn’t take a massacre to occur for you to realize the entitlement and the blessings you have on your life to pass on to others. And it often gets lost here [in Buffalo].”

Ultimately, Whitfield Jr, who just returned from urging Capitol Hill to take charge on gun violence, agrees: As a man who has spent his whole life in public service, he said, it is those in political power who need to take action.

“I’m not an exception and I’m wonderfully blessed to have had that opportunity [to speak to congress]. But what the heck am I supposed to do when my mother gets gunned down like an animal?” he said.

Whitfield explained those that died in the massacre were “the best of thee”—community members with huge webs of connection—whose deaths have reverberated far beyond their own lives. And he intends to keep pushing forward as a “living memorial” for his mother.

“I don’t care if they are Democrats or Republicans, they took oath of office, they all owe us more than we have. They all owe us their considerations, they owe us their humanity—they owe us that,” said Whitfield. “So everybody and anybody in power, if you’re not working, to bring about these kinds of changes, then they should not be where they are.”