Edison Juneteenth Event Relocated Due To Fear Of Trump DEI Order

EDISON, NJ – The Metuchen Edison Piscataway Area NAACP has moved its Juneteenth celebration off federal grounds, to circumvent potential issues raised by President Donald Trump's executive order restricting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

The NAACP’s Juneteenth celebration is an annual event held every year in the Edison-Metuchen area. The event has been relocated from the Edison Job Corps Center on June 7 to Papaianni Park in Edison on June 14.

“We at the NAACP are being forced to relocate our Annual Juneteenth Festival from federal grounds simply because it could be seen as a DEI initiative and risk retaliation under the Trump Administration’s agenda. That’s not just unacceptable—it’s dangerous,” said Reggie Johnson, President of the Metuchen Edison Piscataway Area Branch of the NAACP.

According to NAACP representatives, Job Corps officials contacted the organization after its representatives traveled to Washington D.C. to discuss possible program cutbacks. The officials expressed concern about potential repercussions for hosting activities like the Juneteenth celebration on federal property, despite having held the event at the same location the previous year.

“Who could blame organizations that depend on federal funding for trying to avoid the wrath of a spiteful Trump administration that sees diversity and inclusion not as cornerstones of our democracy, but as threats to be eliminated?” Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) said in a statement.

“This is the same administration that tried to erase Jackie Robinson’s triumphs and downplay the heroism of the Navajo Code Talkers. Trump and his cronies have proven themselves to be small, fragile people—unwilling to embrace the full story of America, including the emancipation of enslaved people that we honor on Juneteenth.”

Juneteenth is the oldest-known celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. The holiday commemorates June 19, the day on which federal troops freed the last of the enslaved people in the country.

Even though the Emancipation Proclamation declared that all enslaved people in the Confederate States were freed as of Jan. 1, 1863, Southern owners didn't follow the order while the Civil War was being fought.

As a result, enslaved people in Texas weren't freed until more than two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered in April 1865.

Pallone said that ignoring history doesn’t heal the country, but weakens it.

“The public deserves to know exactly what’s happening here—a coordinated national effort by Donald Trump and his cronies to erase truth, suppress inclusion, and rewrite American history,” Pallone said