“Black communities should not have to petition for the right to be remembered.” – Kerra Bower
When federal actions quietly erase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the National Parks Registry, silence is not neutrality it is complicity. These removals are not administrative oversights. They are part of a larger, ongoing attempt to diminish Black history, Black struggle, and Black contributions to this country. In that context, affirming support for these holidays is not symbolic. It is a moral line in the sand.
History is not erased all at once. It is eroded slowly, deliberately and often under the guise of process. What makes this moment dangerous is not only the federal rollback itself, but the growing comfort with inaction at every level beneath it. When institutions hesitate to respond, they signal that Black history is conditional and something to be defended only when convenient, popular, or requested.
We have heard the language before: “Every time the feds upset us, we don’t need to respond.”
This framing trivializes the erasure of Black history as an emotional reaction rather than a predictable and documented pattern. The removal of MLK Day and Juneteenth is not simply the federal government “upsetting” communities. It is an attack on collective memory, the very mechanism that helps ensure we do not repeat the atrocities of history, distort civil rights legacies, or forget the truths that shape our present.
Even more concerning is the insistence that support must wait until leaders “hear from the community.”
Black communities should not have to petition for the right to be remembered. No one polls the public to decide whether the Fourth of July deserves recognition. No hearing is required to affirm Presidents’ Day. Yet when it comes to Black history–which is American history permission is suddenly required. This is not community engagement. It is gatekeeping. It places the burden of defense on those already harmed and reframes remembrance as something negotiable.
Calls to “generalize” support so that it covers all cultural holidays follow the same logic. They erase context in the name of neutrality. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth are not interchangeable observances; they mark the end of legalized enslavement, the reality of delayed liberation, and the leadership that forced this nation to confront its contradictions. To compound them into a generic category is to strip them of urgency and meaning. Equity is not achieved by pretending all histories were created equally.
This erosion has real consequences–especially in education. When Black history is minimized, distorted, or treated as optional, it feeds the very systems many claim to oppose. The preschool-to-prison pipeline does not begin with incarceration; it begins with disengagement, misrepresentation, and the quiet removal of identity from classrooms. When children do not see their history protected, affirmed and defended, it shapes how they are taught, how they are disciplined, and how they are valued.
Black American communities are watching. We are tired of being told to wait, to generalize, to justify. Our collective history is not optional. Our delayed liberation is not negotiable. Civic leaders do not need permission to protect truth but they will be held accountable when they fail to do so.
Silence, deflection and false neutrality are choices.
And we will name them.