LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — For Michael McKissic, Juneteenth helps him keep in mind his father, Lonnie McKissic, who endured an immense quantity of racism throughout the 60s as the primary Black contractor in Lansing.
“We’re building a house, and a guy drove up the driveway. He says, ‘How are you doing?’ He introduces himself to my dad. He says, ‘Listen. The community is talking, and they’re saying, “There is a Black man constructing a home out right here. We must always cease him.”’ The white gentleman. He was warning my dad,” stated McKissic.
Michael McKissic. (WLNS)
Though Lonnie confronted discrimination from many different contractors and inspectors, it didn’t cease him from doing what he beloved.
“Everybody has these heroes in their life,” stated McKissic. “My father was my hero, for sure.”
Lonnie constructed many buildings round Lansing, together with church buildings and houses.
Rising up throughout segregation, McKissic discovered the exhausting reality concerning the historical past of slavery and racism from his different family members.
“My grandmother, her mom, was a slave. She actually witnessed her neighbors being pulled out of their home and being held on a tree in the neighborhood,” stated McKissic.
After studying about such a tragedy, McKissic says celebrating Juneteenth is greater than only a vacation; it’s historical past.
“People say, ‘Why are you always celebrating something that’s in the past?’ You know, my granddaughter, my grandkids,” said McKissic. “I want them to know that this is what happened back then. So that we won’t forget.”
