Considering all the liberties we enjoy today, it’s easy to forget that freedom wasn’t always a reality for the enslaved African Americans in this country. By necessity, it was a state of mind.

Juneteenth marks a different day of independence for the Black community. It’s a personal unshackling of sorts—a celebration of our ancestors’ newfound freedom and a chilling reminder of the injustices they endured for far too long. On June 19, 1865, two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Major General Gordon Granger proclaimed the last slaves in Galveston, Texas, were officially free.

In remembrance of Juneteenth, and in an effort to look forward, we invited four Black visionaries from the Las Vegas community to join us for a roundtable discussion at the Weekly offices.

Tony Gladney, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion for MGM Resorts International, moved to Las Vegas during the 1980s. He has been a pivotal force in the gaming and hospitality industry for 30 years.

Ashanti McGee is a visual artist, gallerist and grants and access manager for the Western States Art Federation. She’s also an arts collective participant at Nuwu Art Gallery and Community Center.

Erica Vital-Lazare, a CSN professor of creative writing and marginalized voices in dystopian literature and composition, also heads up the Obodo Collective nonprofit to help end generational poverty in the Historic Westside neighborhood.

And Earl Turner is a longtime Las Vegas showman who has been headlining Strip shows since the days of the Dunes and the Desert Inn hotels.

“I see this becoming a very important part of my life,” Turner told the group. “I see myself with you all, at breakfast and at lunch, keeping in touch with each other after this. Thank you again for bringing us together.”

Parts of this conversation were guided, while others broke off organically into new directions. The following has been edited for clarity and space.

The Significance of Juneteenth

Las Vegas Weekly: Thank you all so much for taking the time to be here. Juneteenth is approaching fast, and it’s an incredibly special day for the Black community. President Joe Biden recently made Juneteenth a federal holiday, which feels long overdue. What does the day mean to you?

Tony Gladney: In the same breath, I’m proud and I’m also relieved. Relieved because our freedom was constituted, although it didn’t happen at the time when they made the announcement. I’m proud because it shows that Black people were part of the creation of this country. … It really hits a couple of scenarios for me personally, because historically, we can look at what was done, what we’re doing and what we continue to do as a people to really move forward. There are still issues, and there’s still a way that we have to come as far as equality. But that’s what I’m really proud about.

Earl Turner: I’m a Baby Boomer, so we didn’t celebrate Juneteenth. We’ve definitely become more and more aware of it over the last 30 to 35 years. When I was a kid, I had a history teacher who was the first Black woman everything. She loved history. She was the person who would say to the kids, “Well, why didn’t we know that? Because the history books didn’t want to put it in there.” She was that person, but she never taught about Juneteenth. So for me, it’s an awareness that I have heard about, and learned about and understood that I should have had when I was coming up. I was 10 years old when Kennedy was assassinated. I was sitting there in my grandparent’s yard when Martin Luther King was assassinated. Did I understand the intense nature of it? Yes and no, because I was a kid. But to understand now what Juneteenth means, it’s significant for a person of my age.

Erica Vital-Lazare: Where did you grow up?

Turner: In a small town in Missouri. I remember people saying, “Go around to the back, or you can’t go in this store.” I never saw black and white fountains, but there was an understanding. You don’t go in there. You don’t drink over there. You don’t do this. Your folks already told you.

Ashanti McGee: Juneteenth to me is like many things being Black in America: It’s complex, it’s layered. I remember when more people started commemorating the holiday, and I received, ‘Happy Juneteenth!’ But … is it happy? I feel like a lot of us live in that duality of being celebratory but also remembering how much it’s taken to even get here. Just to even acknowledge that Black people have been, like Tony said, contributing to this country, building this country, have bled, have fought, have died for, and because of, this country. … A lot of that is thinking about the complexity of who we are, who we’ve been and who we’re becoming. That’s what I think about Juneteenth and also amplifying and showing the complexity of Black people in the United States and how many of these stories are not that far away generationally. When you’re talking about the emancipation of slavery, it really wasn’t that long ago. I’m thankful people are more aware of its history.

Vital-Lazare: That duality, that double consciousness, encompasses so much, because just like blackness itself, it’s so sweet. There’s such bounty and beauty in who we are. Then with the sweetness, of course, comes the bitter. Juneteenth is a clear reflection of that. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by January 1, 1863. So we’re celebrating finally reaching fruition for Texas, which had over 70,000 black folks down there who had no idea that this proclamation had been issued. They were still being held in bondage.

When you look into the history, where we reside since the 1619 landing of the first 20 Africans here, we’ve been struggling and building and inventing and fighting on this soil. But when you look at the history of that proclamation and you are so very grateful for the freedoms, you’re still aware that Juneteenth is every day. We’re living in that liminal space of an awareness of our freedom and a reminder that we are not. I love the arrival of this holiday and that President Biden issued a federal proclamation that it be recognized. At the same time, I’m sort of disturbed by the way it’s co-opted, how the history is erased. You get these bright banners, but there’s no discussion of these slaveholders who, upon the issuing of the proclamation in the South, drove many other slaves to Texas, so that they could still be held in bondage. We don’t talk about that.

Navigating the Black Experience

LVW: Erica, your point makes me think about Las Vegas as a whole. It once held the nickname “the Mississippi of the West,” and yet we are now one of the most racially diverse cities in the country. How has living in such a place affected the Black experience for you as professionals and even parents?

Turner: What we have to teach our kids is that subliminally racism and discrimination and prejudice still exist. I remember once I was up for a very important job, and the word that came back to me was that my audience wasn’t “wide enough.” Y’all know what I’m saying? I understood exactly what that meant. … These are things that you are going to have to overcome and/or accept and move on. But quitting is not an option. It’s so fortunate that we have diversity offices, people who oversee that, and companies giving them credit for what they’re interested in doing that.

Gladney: What I’ve been fortunate to do, from a DEI perspective, is work for companies, such as MGM Resorts, that actually want to listen and take proactive steps forward to make sure that inclusion is a priority. Why? Because it’s smart business and good business. But also because we have a huge customer base as the No. 1 tourist destination, and if entities don’t pay attention, they could possibly cease to exist.

McGee: When it comes to a lot of the corporations, diversity is definitely there and there’s efforts to really push that. On the local level, there’s still a lot of issues. Black people exist with understanding a lot of these nuances, a lot of this coded language where people don’t flat out just deny you. They say that your audience isn’t wide enough or maybe you’re not quite our demographic or not quite what we’re looking for. Maybe you weren’t professional enough, all of these different things.

… In the tech sector, for example, and even in the arts, too, there’s really not that representation. It doesn’t mean that Black people are incapable. It’s really about people being able to actually do the work to find out how you actually bring these people in.

Turner: I’m convinced that change is not made from without; it’s made from within. You can’t change things until you get inside there. You have to get inside and work inside the system to make the system function better.

McGee: Yes, and there are some of those occasions where, if you do it well enough on the outside and you make enough noise, they’ll get the idea. That’s one of the things I’m really enjoying right now. You told me that I couldn’t play in your sandbox. You told me I couldn’t do these things because I lack whatever it is, but somebody has given me an opportunity. I’ve really been fortunate that there have been times where doors have closed and there’s been other ones that say, “We actually appreciate what you do, who you are and what you’re capable of.”

Turner: Same for me—that’s how I was able to accomplish things in my career. But when you have the [Gladneys] inside, it makes it so much easier. Because it’s hard to find those people that are in your corner.

Case in point: In 1985 I had been traveling and playing my clubs, predominantly white nightclubs in the South. I wanted to hire my first Black musician, because I had four white musicians. I told my manager, and he told me one of the places that I worked for in Dallas said, “If he hires another Black musician, we’re probably not going to be able to hire Earl Turner.” It’s all right for one, but when you start talking about two … now what’s that gonna draw? Within six months, I hired two. Someone has to take that chance to speak.

Gladney: When an individual gets an opportunity to be in that situation, there is an accountability. Your prayer is that you can work for a company that understands that accountability that you’re held to. That they are an organization that does not have a problem with speaking truth to power. That is an organization that doesn’t put you in a scenario for you to tell them what they want to hear, but to tell them what the reality is.

We’re gathered here today to have a frank conversation about this Juneteenth period. How many companies are bringing up the very essence of what we’re talking about as an issue of awareness in their workforce? … We need to make sure we set process, policy and procedures to make sure that there is fairness, that there is equity. What actions are we going to take to make not only our internal workforces, and our internal organizations, better, but also the communities around us?

Vital-Lazare: So you’re talking about real action, real economic outcomes in the lives of the people that companies profess to celebrate on June 19th by stocking Juneteenth ice cream on their shelves?

Everyone: (Laughter)

Vital-Lazare: The real question is, how are you actually moving your Black employees and [people of color] through the ranks from the floor up to the upper office of your organization? There’s a new Underground Railroad, and it’s an economic one. It’s an aspirational one. It’s a professional one.

Preparing the Next Generation

LVW: So then how do we teach the younger Black generation to advocate for their brothers and sisters? They are motivated in many ways, but some might also say their efforts are a bit diluted compared to past generations.

McGee: I’m not so sure if it’s necessarily diluted or if it’s just changed. This is a generation that has never experienced life not having a Black president. That’s one of the works, really understanding the roles of different generations. A lot of the younger generations, they’ve got the spunk, they’ve got the tenacity. A lot of the older generations have this decades-long time frame of seeing transition, seeing progression and maybe regression. So it’s having an opportunity to have the guidance of the older generations talking about the work that people have gone through. It’s just another lens of the Black experience. All of the generations have work to do.

Gladney: Marcus Garvey once said, One who does not know their history is like a tree without roots. Every individual that’s assembled here today has expressed their stories from where they’ve been, from the challenges they’ve had, to the successes they’ve had. [In terms of] the millennials and Gen Z … there’s so much promise. But we need to make sure that they know where they come from. That it is not only never forgotten, but that it is a reminder of the work that has been invested from our parents, our grandparents, from us that are sitting around this table. They’re part of that continuous legacy.

Turner: Maybe instead of trying to give our kids everything we didn’t have, we give them what we did have. There are three things I was taught as a young Black man by my parents, and particularly my grandparents. Firstly, they told you about the truth. The second thing they told you is that you’re going to have to have strength to hear the truth. Then, whatever that truth is, you’ve got to have perseverance to stay in the game long enough to overcome whatever that obstacle is. That’s a big challenge for us. We have to tell our kids the truth, and we don’t do that. Because of that, negative things that happen to them take precedence over who they are.

Vital-Lazare: Why don’t we, though?

Turner: That’s something we need to figure out. I remember talking to this man who owned a company. I asked him, “Why don’t you have Black employees in upper management?” He said, “I think it’s that if John is a Black employee, but he aspires to do more and didn’t say anything, I don’t know that John wants to do more.” On so many occasions, it’s about throwing your hat in the ring. You’ve got to go in letting people know, “I may be right here, but I’m looking to go there.” My parents told me, “Don’t ever reach over, reach up.” These are lessons, I gotta tell you, white people have taught me.

McGee: When I was growing up, it was just do as you’re told. You have to question if this is a dynamic that makes it difficult for us to progress. Because if there is this expectation of, I’m going to tell you a task as your superior; just do as you’re told, this doesn’t really give an opportunity for expansion and for that growth. When I was in my early 20s, I was working in a copy center. People told me, “It’s surprising that you’re here. You’re so knowledgeable about all these different things.” It was having opportunities, being exposed to a variety of different people and seeing how you can make these transitions to upward mobility. … That was something I was not taught by the Black community.

Turner: That’s the nail on the head.

McGee: I think that intergenerational communication and relationships has been an incredible strong point for us as Black people. Many of us have had strong influences from our grandparents or aunts and uncles. One of the things I really appreciate about different initiatives like Obodo Collective is that you have this gathering of intergenerational communities, where you have young people talking to the elders, talking to all of these people with knowledge and who have persevered.

Even with some of the racial and political issues that have been happening, one thing I found really profound was seeing a lot of these Civil Rights leaders going back into classrooms or into these young groups and teaching them a lot of these Civil Rights-era tactics and nonviolent opposition. It’s us really making sure we remember we depend on each other.

It’s been really important for me to learn about my elders. My mother’s family is from South Carolina, but particularly Abbeville. We have family members who were enslaved individuals who became sharecroppers in the same place where the Confederacy was established. I have a cousin who is 85, and he’s still growing beans and okra in his garden. We talked about what he’s seen, about these transitions and about the things that just stay the same, how we should constantly question where we’re at and what is progress.

Vital-Lazare: Watching you with your children, Ashanti, and how you teach them by example how to be in community with one another, that’s an important component. Not only will we raise warriors for our people but warriors for the sake of humanity, for anyone who is being mistreated, misvalued, categorized. All of us want three things. … Erving Goffman, [author of] The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, said we want to feel included, we want to be secure and we want to be seen as competent. So we teach our children how to make sure that they garner those things for themselves, but also stand in the gap when they see others in the room are being excluded.

Gladney: I think it’s been vocalized in how our children see it and how we see it that wrong is wrong. If it’s wrong for me, then it’s wrong for you. That has been an important part of how we’re raising our kids. How Earl, as an entertainer, was trying to make sure he made the impact he could make. That Erica, through what she’s done, wasn’t only targeting Black people but targeting all of us to learn through our efforts. That’s something we can be proud of, not only from a standpoint for us, but a standpoint of what’s right for all of us.

McGee: Thank you for saying that. That’s a testament to Civil Rights and a lot of the work that Black people have done since we’ve been here. It has been an effort for everyone. Fannie Lou Hamer once said we’re not free until we’re all free. Having that mindset, understanding that what I do, I do not only because I think it’s right. I do it because I want it to be easier for someone else.

This life doesn’t make sense to me if I’m watching people around me suffer and I’m the only one doing well. That’s one of the things I found so beautiful about all of the Black folks that I love and respect—they continue to do what they do in efforts to help someone else and to grow.

Commemorating Juneteenth

Juneteenth Jazz Concert & Miss Juneteenth Ceremony

June 17, noon-6 p.m., free, West Las Vegas Library, thelibrarydistrict.org.

Honoring Juneteenth With Spoken Word Originals

June 17, 2-3 p.m., free, Clark County Library, thelibrarydistrict.org.

Vegas City Opera: Songs of Freedom

June 17, 3 p.m., free, West Charleston Library, thelibrarydistrict.org.

Las Vegas Juneteenth Festival

June 17, 4-9 p.m., free, World Market Center, june19lv.com.

Henderson Juneteenth Festival

June 17-19, times vary, free, Water Street Plaza, cityofhenderson.com.

Tofu Tees’ Juneteenth Family Night

June 19, 5-8 p.m., free, Fergusons Downtown, fergusonsdowntown.com.

A History of Juneteenth: From Galveston, Texas, to Las Vegas, Nevada

June 23, 2-3:15 p.m., free, Clark County Library, thelibrarydistrict.org.

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