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Metro makes Juneteenth an official holiday for city employees

Paige PflegerWPLN News
Nashville-based mother-daughter band, O.N.E, performs at the National Museum of African American Music's Juneteenth Block Party on June 19, 2021.
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Juneteenth will be a formal holiday for all Metro Nashville employees starting this year.

The holiday commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans after the end of the Civil War.

The Metro Civil Service Commission voted Tuesday to recognize June 19 as an official holiday, and Mayor John Cooper plans to sign an executive order on Thursday formalizing the holiday for all city employees. He will sign it at Nashville’s historic Fort Negley.

Already a federal holiday, Davidson County will join several other Tennessee communities that have recognized Juneteenth as a holiday, including Columbia and Clarksville, plus Montgomery and Shelby counties. Gov. Bill Lee says he supports making it a state holiday.

Paige Pfleger, Criminal Justice Reporter

Paige Pfleger covers criminal justice for WPLN News. She has investigated guns and juvenile justice as a fellow with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, and her investigation into domestic violence and firearms dispossession won a regional Edward R. Murrow award and was a finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and a Livingston Award. She previously covered criminal justice and addiction in Ohio and was named the state's reporter of the year by the Associated Press. Her work has appeared nationally on NPR, The Washington Post, Marketplace, and PRI's The World, and she has worked in the newsrooms of The Tennessean, Michigan Radio, WHYY, Vox and NPR headquarters in DC.

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