Trump DEI attacks have changed how companies celebrate Juneteenth

AI-assisted summary
• While companies continue to observe Juneteenth, the level of engagement has decreased compared to previous years following nationwide protests against racial injustice.
• Some organizations are shifting from highly visible displays of support to more internal and lower-profile activities.
• Despite a backlash against DEI initiatives, Juneteenth has maintained broad acceptance, with a growing number of large employers recognizing it as a paid holiday.

As protests against racial injustice gripped the nation in 2020, major corporations rushed to observe Juneteenth and give their employees the day off. 

Five years later, they are still commemorating the holiday but not with the same fanfare.

“For the past few years, companies were using Juneteenth as an opportunity to share commitments to advance racial equity,” said Joelle Emerson, CEO of culture and inclusion platform Paradigm. “In the current climate, I imagine we may see fewer of these high visibility statements and more of an internal focus.” 

Emerson said she has not spoken with any companies that plan to stop recognizing the holiday, but 15% of organizations in a recent benchmarking study from Paradigm said they would stop celebrating identity and heritage-related events like Juneteenth amid the Trump administration-led backlash against workplace diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 

In observing the holiday celebrated by Black Americans for generations, corporations are focused on “lower visibility” activities, Emerson said.

A new analysis from Gravity Research found corporate engagement on Juneteenth plummeted this year. The number of Juneteenth posts decreased by 50% from 2024, from 32 to 16. That decline followed a 20% drop from 2023 to 2024. Just 13 of the Fortune 100 commemorated Juneteenth on their social media feeds, down from 30 in 2024.

How Walmart, Meta are observing Juneteenth

Hella Creative – a small California collective that came together in 2020 to push for corporate recognition of Juneteenth in a viral campaign that ultimately gathered support from 1,500 companies – said it has not seen a major pullback.

"Juneteenth recognition has achieved broad, bipartisan acceptance that transcends the current DEI backlash," said Miles Dotson, a member of the collective that puts on an annual Juneteenth festival in Oakland, California. "This reinforces that Juneteenth observance represents a more durable form of corporate racial recognition – one that companies feel safe maintaining even as they retreat from more comprehensive DEI programs."

About 4 in 10 large employers observed Juneteenth in 2024 and gave the federal holiday as a paid day off, up from 39% last year and 9% in 2021, according to consulting firm Mercer. The firm did not track Juneteenth participation this year. 

Technology giant Meta said Juneteenth is a companywide paid holiday in the U.S, and employees will have Thursday off. Retailer Target recognizes Juneteenth as a company holiday and its headquarters will be closed but its stores will be open.

Walmart does not give employees the day off but observes Juneteenth as a cultural holiday and sends to its 5,500 locations so that retail employees can celebrate on the job. Bank of America said it is closed in the U.S. on Thursday. Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network, also observes Juneteenth.

Juneteenth was officially recognized as a federal holiday in 2021 after President Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. While private companies are under no obligation to give employees any particular day off, the move put pressure on more employers to make Juneteenth a paid holiday.

The New York Stock Exchange and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association began observing Juneteenth as a market holiday the following year. The stock market and bond markets will be closed Thursday.

Recognizing Juneteenth “sends a clear message to employees from specific underrepresented backgrounds that they belong at the company, and a message to all employees that the company values diversity,” Emerson said. “Fostering that sense of belonging isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a core part of building a healthy, high-performance culture.”

Stories of justice and identity across the country: Sign up for USA TODAY's This is America newsletter.

How DEI backlash has affected Juneteenth

The political climate has shifted sharply over the last five years and, much like June celebrations of Pride Month, Juneteenth events across the country have been forced to scale back due to declining financial support, according to the Associated Press. 

More than a dozen companies backed out of supporting the Juneteenth Music Festival in the historically Black Five Points neighborhood of Denver, for example, it reported.

Corporate cutbacks and budget deficits have also led to pulled funding. 

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, said state employees would not get Thursday as a paid day off and the state will not host any Juneteenth events this year. He cited the budget deficit. 

When he took office in January, Morrisey issued an executive order eliminating DEI in state government. Last month, he signed a bill making that order the law in his state.

What is Juneteenth?

Juneteenth – a combination of the words “June” and “nineteenth” – commemorates June 19, 1865 – the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned they had been freed, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

It has gone by many names over the decades, including Freedom Day, Emancipation Day and Black Fourth of July.

What does Trump think of Juneteenth?

Trump drew condemnation in 2020 when he scheduled a campaign rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of one of the worst massacres of African Americans in U.S. history, before rescheduling it. He claimed the controversy made Juneteenth “very famous.”

"I did something good,” Trump said at the time. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

During his reelection bid, Trump proposed making Juneteenth a national holiday.

(This story was updated with new information)