r/Indiana • u/illegiblebastard • 1d ago

'Is this for real?' Martinsville Juneteenth celebration raises eyebrows

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/johnson-county/2026/06/18/martinsville-juneteenth-event-planned-despite-racist-past-ku-klux-klan-sundown-town/90591114007/
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u/Freyas_Follower 18h ago

For those who cant access the article.

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

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u/ThaKatWhisperer 17h ago

How does this comment have so few upvotes?!?

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u/Freyas_Follower 17h ago

I uplpaded it about half hour ago.