Skye Perryman
Cooperative Baptists gathered on Juneteenth morning in Jacksonville, Florida, to hear remarks from Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, who spoke about the holiday’s importance and its role in the fight for freedom and inclusion for all. The breakfast was sponsored by the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB), Baptist News Global (BNG) and Good Faith Media.
Perryman, who grew up in Texas, spoke of the holiday’s Texas roots, when 2,000 troops arrived on the shores of Galveston on June 19, 1865, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been signed two and a half years earlier. As a child, when school let out for the summer, she would travel from her hometown of Waco to visit her aunt in the Galveston area, where she witnessed the joy of Juneteenth celebrations long before it became a national holiday. Shortly after, she would travel to her grandparents’ house in Magnolia to celebrate Independence Day.
“Growing up, I knew you had to celebrate Juneteenth before you got to celebrate July 4th,” she said. “And as I grew up and learned more about this country, I realized that probably wasn’t just a calendar coincidence. It’s actually a meaningful coincidence that you cannot celebrate the ideals of this country on July 4th without first celebrating all the ideals of Juneteenth.”
She added, “And Juneteenth is a reminder that freedom written on a piece of paper—whether it is the soaring rhetoric of our founding fathers that all are created equal or the words written in the Emancipation Proclamation—doesn’t get it done. It’s the people who get it done.”
Perryman and her team at Democracy Forward have been active since January 2025, holding the Trump administration accountable in court for its incursions against democracy and human rights violations. In her remarks, she framed her work against the backdrop of the historic fight for freedom exemplified by Juneteenth.
“This nation has always been struggling to achieve true democracy for all people,” she said. “We were kidding ourselves if we thought that we had somehow achieved it. Juneteenth reminds us that we are in the midst of an old fight, just in a new time.”
Perryman encouraged attendees to continue their work as people of faith, putting their words and bodies on the line to ensure that all people can enjoy the benefits of freedom. She praised a lawsuit the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) launched against the administration in early 2025 to protect places of worship from ICE enforcement activities.
“For many denominations, there will be a turning point where it becomes more en vogue to step up,” she said. “That was not the ethos at the time [last year] when the CBF stepped up to the challenge on behalf of the most marginalized people, looked fear in the face and didn’t blink.”
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.