Students’ Juneteenth celebration supports Black-owned businesses, more Black teachers

Students, parents, teachers and other members of the Lacey community gathered on the sidewalk in front of Beau Legs Fish ’n’ Chips and Jugheadz barber shop on Martin Way E. on Friday to bring customers to the two Black-owned businesses as they marked Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States.

The students also organized the event to shed light on issues within the North Thurston Public Schools, including the lack of full-time Black educators.

The celebration began at 10:30 a.m. Friday with students from River Ridge’s Black Student Union (BSU) handing out signs they prepared earlier in the week to those who came out to show support. Soon, over 50 people were waving signs at passing cars, receiving honks in return. The BSU sold T-shirts with “BLACK LIVES MATTER” written on them to raise money to support their club.

Jenay McGuire, a member of River Ridge’s BSU, who will be a junior when she returns to school in the fall, helped organize the celebration. “It’s really important for all of us to stand in solidarity with Black-za1`owned businesses,” she said.

“We’re also focused on programs that will hire more teachers of color,” McGuire told The Olympian.

Students from River Ridge say that their school, while having Black educators, does not do enough, and many are paraeducators rather than full-time teachers.

“It’s very important for students to have teachers that look like them or someone that they can relate to and go to,” McGuire said. “We’re really pushing for that for our school system because it’s hard for students of color to have that relationship ... in our school’s community.”

River Ridge’s BSU has four points they would like the school district to address: hire more Black teachers; fund more counselors; end zero-tolerance disciplining; and mandate Black history and ethnic studies courses in the schools’ curriculum.

North Thurston Public Schools Executive Director of Community Relations Courtney Schrieve said in a phone interview, “We have been doing a lot of work in our district around equity, both with staff and students. We are actively looking for ways to improve our curriculum and instruction to address students of color and their place in history.”

Schrieve added that North Thurston Public Schools has changed its hiring procedures to eliminate bias when interviewing candidates for positions.

“An example of this would be we hired a diverse candidate as our new assistant principal for River Ridge High School, She said. “He’s from Guam and we used this new process to hire him. It’s a top priority for us to get more diverse candidates.”

Students from other schools in the district came out to show support and celebrate.

Caleb Morris, a Timberline High School student, came to both support the River Ridge BSU and find out how to get his own school involved. “Our BSU, we heard about it and we were like ‘let’s get in on this too!’” he said. “So I’m dedicating about five hours to being out here.”

Yecenia Sager, a rising junior at River Ridge, came to support the Black Lives Matter movement, and to advocate for more Black people being hired as full-time educators at her school. “All the black educators at our school are not really teachers so if we have concern that’s related to our skin color, we can’t really go to anybody. (Getting help from a white teacher is) not the same as having an African-American teacher help you,” she said.

Students are also concerned that schools are not doing enough to teach the histories of non-white Americans.

Jaylyn Jones, a rising junior at River Ridge, said in a Zoom call with The Olympian that her school has not mentioned Juneteenth in history classes, and that she has often had to explain the holiday to classmates and friends. “I feel happy to know enough to educate my friends,” she said. “But it needs to be taught in schools.”

Christie Tran, an art teacher at River Ridge and the faculty adviser for the BSU, helped her students organize the event, and also spread planning information to students from other schools. Tran said she would like to see more events celebrating Black excellence throughout the summer.

“I can arrange to have these kids feel empowered about themselves and their position, and give them the strength to know they can make change,” Tran said.

This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 4:25 PM.