Sandra Vincent Forward

A JUNETEENTH REFLECTION
By Sandra Vincent

Today is Juneteenth. It is an important, historically grounded holiday, and it should serve every year as a recalibration. Instruments drift. Compasses wander. What was set true a year ago does not stay true on its own. So once a year we are meant to stop, check our bearings against something fixed, and reset. Juneteenth is that fixed point. It marks the day in 1865 when the news of freedom finally reached the enslaved people of Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had already declared them free.

But I want to tell you about a different date.

At my grandmother's house in Pittsview, Alabama, freedom did not come on June 19. In her part of rural Russell County, in the communities called Pittsview, Battle, Antioch, and Frog Pond, the day of freedom is May 28. The joyous news reached the enslaved people of that area in May of 1865, and ever since, May 28 has been kept as a community holiday, a day that still draws celebrants home from all over the nation. There is a historical marker standing there now to say so. It was placed in 1998, and it closes with five words that hold the whole weight of it: "Thank God we are in His care."

Sit with that for a moment. Galveston learned on June 19. Pittsview learned three weeks earlier, on a day they fixed at May 28. The dates do not match because freedom did not arrive everywhere at once. It came community by community, as fast or as slow as the news could travel, and as fast or as slow as the people holding others in bo***ge were willing to let it travel. Each community keeps the date the truth actually reached them. The varying dates are not a confusion to be corrected. They are the argument itself.

Because here is what we are really commemorating, in Texas and in Pittsview alike. We are celebrating a change in the system that the people imprisoned by that system did not know had happened. The law had already changed. The proclamation had already been signed. And still, for months, men and women rose before dawn and worked land that was no longer owed a single hour of their labor, because the people who profited from their unknowing simply chose not to tell them. Freedom existed on paper while bo***ge continued in fact, and the only thing standing between the two was a truth deliberately withheld.

That should be a life-changing realization for anyone who still dismisses the reality of racism. Not because of how long ago it was, but because of how recently. June 19, 1865 was only 161 years ago. McDonough, the city I was honored to serve, was founded in 1823, before that first Juneteenth. And it would take almost another century, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, only 62 years ago, for Black Americans to be recognized as equal under the law. These are not ancient numbers. If you are sixty, your own life began before the Civil Rights Act was signed. Your mother or father knew people whose grandparents had been enslaved. This is not distant history. It is family history, close enough to touch across a kitchen table.

And even that recognition has never been allowed to rest. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is still being challenged and systematically chipped away, not by repeal, which Congress alone could do, but by the quieter work of dismantling the tools that make it enforceable. In April of 2025, an executive order titled "Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy" directed federal agencies to abandon disparate impact, the legal standard that lets us address discrimination proven by patterns and results rather than by a confession of intent. In December of 2025, the Justice Department made it final, stripping disparate impact liability from its Title VI enforcement rules, one of the central tools for challenging discrimination in any program that receives federal money. Members of Congress have since moved to write the same restriction into permanent law. The Act still stands on the books. What is being removed, piece by piece, is its reach.

So let me name the underbelly of racism plainly.

The underbelly of racism is that it stopped needing anyone to believe in it. It no longer announces itself. It dresses up as loyalty, as tradition, as merit, as fiscal prudence, as a reasonable defense of the way things have always been. It survives most comfortably inside people who would be genuinely offended to be called racist, which is exactly why it survives. It is no longer the cruelty of a master. It is the quiet, default setting that keeps running when no one bothers to examine it. And it shows itself most clearly not in hatred, but in the discomfort some people feel when fairness is simply offered to everyone. I learned this firsthand. My promise to the city was simple, and I meant every word of it: a mayor for all of McDonough. That should be the least controversial thing an elected leader can say. Yet time and again, that simple phrase was heard as an accusation. People assumed that if I said I would be a mayor for all, I must be saying the mayor before me had not been. That was never my meaning, and it was never true. But the assumption arrived on its own, unbidden, and people rallied to defend what came before against a charge no one had made. The reaction revealed something the words did not contain. There is a name for the reflex that turns one person's inclusion into another's loss, but that is a subject for another day. What matters here is simpler. A promise to include everyone was received by some as a threat, and that reception, not the promise, is the thing worth examining.

And it still exists. We only need to look at how systematically the wealthiest among us are becoming a ruling class, and how public policy is being shaped to protect, empower, and financially support those who need the least support of all.

This is not a change of subject. It is the same subject. Slavery was never first a hatred. It was first an economy. It was a machine built to decide who was allowed to extract value from whose body, and who would be kept unknowing so the extraction could continue. The clothes have changed. The machine has not. The unequal distribution of dignity and the unequal distribution of resources have always been the same project, wearing whatever costume the age will accept. When policy is written to shield those who already have the most, the people on the other side of that arrangement are once again being kept from news that would change their circumstances. The mechanism is old. We have simply stopped calling it by its name.

Which brings us back to recalibration. The instrument has drifted again. We are once more rationing freedom by distance and circumstance and calling it prudence. So the work of this day is not to celebrate a freedom that is safely two centuries behind us. The work is to ask a harder and more present question.

Who, right now, has not yet gotten the news?

Today is the perfect day to reflect, to learn, and to renew our American commitment to justice for all.

It is with heavy hearts that we share the passing of one of our own. On June 3, 2026, Antoinette Roberts passed away peacefully at home surrounded by her family.

Antoinette served as our volunteer Social Media Manager for the past year, and in that short time she transformed every one of our platforms. Her talent, creativity, and professionalism elevated our marketing presence far beyond the standard and brought new visibility to our mission like never before.

Her calm demeanor, gentle spirit, and soothing smile brightened our days and strengthened our team. Though she was not a Veteran herself, her dedication to supporting Veterans was unwavering. She worked tirelessly to ensure our message reached those who needed us most—honoring her husband Lamont’s service and the service of all Veterans and their families.

Thank you, Antoinette, for the impact you made on this organization and the lives we serve.
We will miss you deeply.

I am deeply saddened to announce the passing of my dear friend MrsAntoinette Roberts. Antionette is the founder of JHolman's house a su***de prevention non-profit.

Antionette has given so much to the McDonough Henry County community and her presence will missed. Please keep Antionette's husband and children in your prayers.

Antionette, I feel like oxygen just left the room, and darkness came before sundown. Rest well my sister, your served with heart, blood, sweat, and tears. ❤️

...and the saddest part is, when it's all over and done, the citizens will have no trust or respect in government - and there goes our confidence in Democracy.

ESSAYS IN THE KEY OF LIFE
By Sandra Vincent

A Reflection on Being a W**d

I love gardening, but life has not afforded me much time for it over the last several years. Some of my greatest lessons were taught to me by my great-grandparents while hoeing rows, planting seeds, watering the plants, w**ding, picking, and pruning. Long before I understood leadership, public service, relationships, or even myself, I learned that nature has a way of teaching truths that are difficult to learn anywhere else. Even now, every plant becomes a sermon in the pulpit of my garden.

This year I started gardening again. I decided to plant in containers because I could never seem to find the time to get fully organized. The first thing I did was resurrect my composting. This time I added worms. I also intentionally chose not to label my containers. Every vegetable, every fruit, every seed, I simply tossed into a container. My job was not to remember what I had planted. My job was to prepare the soil, water, and watch. This is called a chaos garden, and every day seemed to offer a lesson.

One morning, while checking the containers, I noticed several plants emerging that I did not recognize. My first thought was that they must be w**ds. They were growing where I had not expected them to grow. They were uninvited, unplanned, and unfamiliar. My hand instinctively reached down to pull them, but something stopped me. How did I know they were w**ds? The truth was that I didn't. I had planted so many things and failed to label them that I could not immediately distinguish between what I had intentionally planted and what had simply appeared on its own.

So I left them alone.

Over the next several weeks, those mystery plants began to reveal themselves. Some were volunteer tomatoes that had sprouted from the compost. Others were flowers whose seeds had survived from a previous season. Some were vegetables I had completely forgotten planting. What I had initially assumed were w**ds turned out to be part of the harvest. The only reason I considered removing them was because I did not recognize them.

That realization stayed with me long after I left the garden.

How often do we do the same thing with people? How often do we look at someone and decide they are a w**d, not because of who they are, but because of where they are growing? We see someone who does not fit our expectations, someone whose life has taken an unconventional path, someone who asks uncomfortable questions, challenges accepted thinking, or refuses to stay within the neat rows society has established. Because we do not understand them, we become suspicious of them. Because they do not look like what we expected, we assume they have no value.

The truth is that a w**d is not a scientific classification. Nature does not recognize w**ds. A w**d is simply a plant growing where someone has decided it should not be. The label says more about the observer than it does about the plant. I find it interesting that some of the very plants we call w**ds are among the most resilient in nature. They survive droughts, storms, neglect, and harsh conditions. They grow through cracks in concrete and flourish in places where other plants would die. They possess a remarkable determination to become what they were created to be.

Some people are like that.

Life has stepped on them, overlooked them, underestimated them, and counted them out. They have been told they are too much, not enough, too loud, too quiet, too different, too ambitious, or too unconventional. Yet somehow they continue to grow. They continue to rise. They continue to become. What others viewed as a flaw was often the very characteristic that enabled them to survive.

What is even more fascinating is that many w**ds serve a purpose in nature. Ecologists call some of them pioneer species because they are often the first plants to appear in damaged ground. They stabilize the soil, restore nutrients, and prepare the way for other things to grow. They show up where healing is needed. They enter places others avoid. They do the hard work of restoration long before anyone notices their contribution.

That sounds familiar too.

Some of the people who have changed communities, challenged injustice, advanced science, created art, built institutions, and transformed lives were considered w**ds in their own time. They did not fit. They disrupted comfortable thinking. They appeared in places where others believed they did not belong. Yet history often reveals that what people tried to uproot was exactly what was needed.

Standing in my chaos garden, I realized that sometimes the difference between a w**d and a treasured plant is simply time. One is judged before its purpose is understood, while the other has already revealed its contribution. Perhaps that is why we should be careful about dismissing people too quickly. We rarely know what God is cultivating beneath the surface. We rarely know what purpose is taking root in a life that appears out of place.

The next time you encounter a w**d, or a person who seems to be growing outside of your expectations, pause before reaching for the shovel. What appears unwanted today may simply be something whose story has not yet been told. Given enough time, the harvest has a way of revealing what was there all along.