Naomi Watkins If you happened to be near Union Station in Ogden, Utah on Saturday, June 20th, this year, you might have been surprised to see Wall Street filled with all kinds of cars, from suburbans to Camaros to Volkswagen Beetles, bumping down the street. 200 people come out to be a part of the caravan and we rode through town by our public safety building, by the farmer’s market, and did a lot of honking and people had all of their signs around, not just Juneteenth, but Black Lives Matter and, you know, supporting those movements that are going on at this particular time. Betty Sawyer We couldn’t do an outdoor celebration. It was a last-minute addition, part of a scramble to take Juneteenth virtual after the Covid-19 pandemic threatened to derail months of planning and work, and organizers had to get creative. But the caravan was not one of the events originally planned as part of this year’s month-long festival. It was a full-on, socially distanced party, with music pulsing and people honking and cheering as part of Utah’s annual celebration of Juneteenth, a holiday that celebrates the freeing of American slaves after the Civil War.

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And our police, of course, led us on that parade route, on that caravan route, so that was important as well to show that solidarity and support with what we’re doing. Once they did, it took decades of work to get that history recognized both nationally and in Utah, and their efforts have left a lasting impact on the state. For her and her team, cancelling the Juneteenth event was never an option because it’s so much more than a party. Both women had to first learn their histories for themselves. Betty Sawyer, Community Engagement Coordinator in Access and Diversity at Weber State University and an activist on issues of racial justice in Utah for over 40 years. And so, even with our virtual celebration we had to be really creative to keep some of the traditions of our celebration intact. It’s a way to share the history of her people. Do critical community work. Naomi Watkins Betty Sawyer is the director of the Utah Juneteenth Freedom and Heritage Festival and Holiday.

Tom Williams So today we’re talking about stories — not just individual stories, but stories of people and cultures, especially those that haven’t been widely known or told. For Mae Timbimboo Parry, it was about getting the “Battle of Bear River” renamed the “Bear River Massacre” in recognition of the hundreds of her ancestors who were slaughtered by the U.S. Tom Williams You know, there’s a recurring line in the musical Hamilton where George Washington says to Alexander Hamilton, “You have no control over who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” But these women were determined to take that control and tell the story of their people that wasn’t being told. In addition to planning Utah’s Juneteenth celebration, Betty Sawyer was an important part of the effort to get Martin Luther King Day recognized as an official holiday in Utah. Naomi Watkins And we’re focusing on two women who have done the work of bringing those stories to light.

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Naomi Watkins And when you frame it that way, I think it’s especially important right now to recognize that part of what many people across the country are fighting for (in addition to some specific policy changes) is representation in the narrative — for their stories to be told from their perspective — and for people to listen to that perspective. Mae Timbimboo Parry had grown up hearing stories about that 1863 attack in which the soldiers brutally killed hundreds of men, women, National Park at Narathiwat (resort.thaibounty.com) and children of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone tribe – the single worst slaughter of Native American people in American history. Her work in dozens of other ways. And representation and an accurate narrative is also what Mae Timbimboo Parry demanded for her people. That’s part of what Betty Sawyer does through Juneteenth. Tom Williams Yeah, and she began at a very young age to grapple with the tension between the official narrative and what she knew was true.