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How One City Beat The US To Making Juneteenth An Official Paid Holiday

Princess Johnson, a dancer and owner of the Greensboro, North Carolina-based Royal Expressions Contemporary Ballet, didn’t grow up celebrating Juneteenth. Even as a Black woman who grew up in the South, the holiday was something only a few people in her circle celebrated. “I didn’t know what it was exactly. Growing up in the United States, everything’s about the Fourth of July,” she says. Juneteenth, or Freedom Day, as many Black Americans call it, commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union troops brought word to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas that they were free under the Emancipation Proclamation. But the news of their freedom arrived late — about two years late.

A Pandemic-Era Eviction Prevention Program Inches Toward Permanence

Courtroom 215, located in Guilford County Courthouse in Greenboro, North Carolina, can feel like a machine, spitting out judgments as quickly as fresh eviction cases are filed. For those unfamiliar with the civil court system, it can be daunting, especially without legal help navigating the process. Unlike criminal court, where defendants have a right to an attorney if they cannot afford one, there is no federally-upheld right to counsel in civil cases. It’s all dependent on the city or county. According to the National Coalition for Civil Right to Counsel, as of March 2024, tenant representation through an attorney is as low as 4% and landlord representation as high as 83%. NCCRC also found that only 14 out of 50 states have a robust right to counsel specifically for eviction proceedings.
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