Washington, D.C
Black Georgia veterans take ‘Honor Flight’ to D.C. in Juneteenth celebration of their service • Georgia Recorder
This Juneteeth, retired U.S. Air Force Captain Marian Dee Elder and 25 of her fellow Black veterans will board a plane in Atlanta and fly to Washington D.C.
There, this group will spend the day visiting various commemorative sites. They will share stories, shed tears and strengthen bonds forged by their unique experiences and challenges as Black servicemen and women.
Elder recalls that she faced discrimination and closed doors as a Black woman in the military. it was more difficult for Black soldiers to get promotions or selective duty stations, she said. Elder said she believes that racial discrimination has lessened since her enlistment, but she knows that there is a significant history of downplaying Black veterans’ contributions.
“This opportunity to go on this Juneteenth flight is just a way of, to me, a recognition that African Americans are important, did play a significant role in the military and it’s about time we got recognized,” Elder said.
In Washington, D.C., these Veterans will visit the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. When they return to Georgia Wednesday evening, the group will continue to celebrate Juneteenth and one another as they wrap up the inaugural Juneteenth “Honor Flight.”
Historically, Black veterans are some of the least recognized soldiers in American military history. African Americans have fought alongside white soldiers dating back to the American Revolution, throughout the World Wars and in conflicts overseas since then. Despite their equal service and sacrifice, for decades America’s Black veterans received a sliver of the recognition and celebration that white veterans did.
The Juneteenth tribute put together by the Honor Flight Network is a celebration tailor-made for veterans. Since 2005, the Honor Flight Network has provided veterans with all-expenses-paid round-trip flights to the United States capital, where they spend the day touring memorials.
This experience gives veterans from across Georgia are included in the chance to meet one another and memorialize history. The new Juneteenth Honor Flight is particularly special because Black veterans share a unique past that outsiders white veterans cannot fully comprehend.
John McCaskill, Honor Flight Network board member and historian, attests to the unique effect the flights have had on so many veterans.
“It is what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called the ‘incommunicable experience of war,’” said McCaskill. “Unless you’ve experienced combat, you wouldn’t understand, and it wouldn’t do any good for [veterans] trying to explain it. They couldn’t explain it in a language that you could understand. But when they are around each other, it allows them to release some things and to heal from some things.”
Elder, or “Captain Dee” as she was called, began service in the Army in 1973 and went on to serve in the Navy before retiring from the Air Force in 1996. Elder primarily served delivering health care, beginning with driving ambulances and giving physical exams and then getting an associate’s degree in nursing to serve in the Navy and Air Force. She went on to become a flight nurse and retired as a captain.
Elder found out about the Juneteenth Honor Flight by word of mouth at a Veterans Affairs medical center and found herself especially interested in this special Juneteenth trip.
“Juneteenth, the holiday, is an important holiday for all African Americans,” said Elder. “That’s emancipation. So that was a sign of freedom, and as a veteran, I fought for our freedom while I was in the service during wartime. So it’s important that I can be a part – it’s like I’m making history.”
Juneteenth, a federal holiday since 2021, is an annual commemoration of the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States.
On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, freeing all enslaved people in the Confederate states. But the freedom didn’t spread to territory still controlled by Confederates. In Texas, freedom wasn’t realized until much later.
On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and the army announced more than 200,000 enslaved people were freed, hence the celebration of the day as Juneteenth. In 2021, Congress designated June 19 as a federal holiday.
Georgians across the state celebrate this holiday in a variety of ways throughout the whole week. From the Taste of Juneteenth festival in Dublin last Saturday, the day-of Juneteenth Augusta Festival all the way to Savannah’s Juneteenth Fine Arts Festival next Saturday, Georgians are memorializing and celebrating.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Seventy-two veterans took a trip Saturday to our nation’s capital to visit memorials honoring their service in the armed forces.
This year marks the 12th trip to Washington, D.C. for Honor Flight Tallahassee.
Early Saturday morning, veterans and their guardians met to take a charter flight up to D.C.
Throughout the day, veterans were taken to the World War II memorial, as well as the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. The veterans also visited Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
More Tallahassee news:
The day ended with a wonderful welcome home celebration.
Our Jacob Murphey, Julia Miller, Taylor Viles, and Grace Temple accompanied the veterans, capturing moments from throughout the day.
The team will have live coverage from Washington, D.C. on Monday to share more from the day’s events.
We will continue to have coverage throughout the month of May, leading up to our Honor Flight special on Memorial Day.
To keep up with the latest news as it develops, follow WCTV on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Nextdoor and X (Twitter).
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4 things to know about the weather:
- Chances of rain in the morning
- Gusty Sunday
- Chilly Monday
- Temps will rise again through the work week
Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.
After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.
The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.
Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.
However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.
QuickCast
SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s
MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s
Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.
Washington, D.C
‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington
The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.
“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”
Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.
Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.
“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.
“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”
Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”
A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.
Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.
Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.
But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.
“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”
At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.
The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.
Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.
For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.
“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”
For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.
In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.
Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.
“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”
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