Gary employees will be getting additional paid days off this year after the Common Council added the celebration of Juneteenth and Indiana’s primary Election Day to the list.
The council approved the revised holiday schedule Tuesday, which gives employees Monday, June 20, off for the Juneteenth holiday. June 19, the actual holiday, falls on a Sunday this year. Employees also get Tuesday, May 3, off for the primary election. Employees already were given Tuesday, Nov. 8, off for the general election when officials first approved the 2022 holiday schedule.
Council President William Godwin, D-1st, said giving employees the Juneteenth holiday was a collaborative move between the executive branch and mayor’s office and the common council.
He said the effort to recognize Juneteenth is part of a broader movement nationally to acknowledge and mark the day.
“We had a wonderful celebration last year,” Godwin said.
The addition of Juneteenth and the primary Election Day to the vacation calendar brings the number of paid days off for full-time city workers to 18.
Currently there are 11 federally recognized holidays: New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.
The state of Indiana recognizes 14 holidays including the 11 federal holidays, Primary Election Day and General Election Day. The state does not recognize the Juneteenth holiday on the federal calendar but does recognize Good Friday and Lincoln’s Birthday.
Gary follows the state schedule holiday schedule and also recognizes Juneteenth, the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve.
In February 2021 the city renamed the observance of Columbus Day to Richard Gordon Hatcher Day. At the time Councilman Ronald Brewer, D-At large, said Columbus Day remains a controversial holiday in the African American community. Brewer supported a separate holiday for Hatcher to be celebrated on his July 10 birthday, a measure that did not gain the support of the full council.
Hatcher was Gary’s first Black mayor. He was mayor for 20 years after winning the seat in 1967 as the nation grappled with the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, Hatcher, along with Carl Stokes, who was elected mayor of Cleveland the same day, is considered to be the first African American mayor elected to a major U.S. city.
Carrie Napoleon is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
