15 Minutes With …. Reuben Hays of Juneteenth GVL
Reuben Hays is a Navy veteran who grew up in Chicago and Los Angeles and settled in Greenville in 2007. He’s an entrepreneur, the owner and CEO of Crescent Surgical Supply, a medical supplies broker with offices off Miller Road in Greenville.
He’s also the founder and executive director of Juneteenth GVL, the growing nonprofit that is organizing and presenting a series of events to celebrate the annual observance of Juneteenth National Independence Day.
Also known as Freedom Day or Jubilee Day, it commemorates June 19, 1865, when federal troops dispatched to Texas after the end of the Civil War announced in the city of Galveston that the 250,000 formerly enslaved people in the state were free and were to be given legal and economic equality.
The decree came more than two months after the surrender of the Confederate army at Appomattox, Va., 2½ years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, but nonetheless was received with joy and celebration by those Black citizens it was issued to inform and protect.
Juneteenth has been celebrated in Texas ever since and has been a state holiday there since 1980, but it was slow to catch on in much of the rest of the nation until recently. The first city-sanctioned event in Greenville was in 2020. The day became an official federal holiday in 2021, but South Carolina legislators are still debating whether to follow suit.
Hays says he hopes that Juneteenth GVL’s event will continue to grow in coming years and that its scale will someday rival “a state fair.”
TALK GREENVILLE: Thanks for taking time to talk with us. Talk a little bit about why a celebration of Juneteenth is important for everyone.
REUBEN HAYS: Juneteenth is about celebrating freedom, celebrating culture through music, food, art. Freedom is worth celebrating, I think we can all agree about that. I've celebrated the Fourth of July all my life, it's the most American thing you can do, right? But that Independence Day did not include all Americans, and until all of us were free, were we really free? That's why education about the history of Juneteenth is so important. It represents the complete freeing of America.
TG: Talk a little about the different events this year.
RH: We've got a lot going on. The kickoff will be a Freedom Ride for all the motorcycle enthusiasts. It's the Saturday before, June 10. It’ll be a poker run, followed with a barbecue. On Friday, June 16, we have our Gala at the Greenville Convention Center, where we're looking to host anywhere between 750 and 1,000. We’ll have a program of music, poetry and a fashion show. We'll also do an auction to try and raise some money for scholarships and it's going to be a big dance party.
On Saturday (the 17th) is our MegaFest, centered at the Pavilion at the Peace Center, where we'll have our stage with local acts all day long. We'll have food, some amusement rides and games for kids. We will utilize some space across the street at Camperdown Plaza for our wellness event --we're having a 5k, yoga and a cycle bar where we'll bring in stationary bikes. It's going to be a big, public workout and wellness event, where we’ll raise money for veterans -- we're charging $22 to recognize the 22 vets who commit suicide every day in this country.
TG: That’s a big event!
RH: We'll have lots of retail vendors, food vendors, food trucks and things like that as well. Probably have some street artists and acts going on. It's a community-based event that is open to the public and we welcome everybody. We're going to have an artist tent where we'll have all kinds of art, including some live art exhibitions. There will be a history and legacy display on the mezzanine at the Peace Center. It's basically going to take people on a walk about Juneteenth, why it's important as a holiday.
TG: It seems awareness of the day was limited for many people until recently. Did you grow up celebrating Juneteenth?
RH: It was a very obscure sort of holiday. I never really knew much about it. I'm not from the South, so I didn't learn about Juneteenth, really until I went to Texas on business in 2013. I was in Dallas and I was exposed to my first Juneteenth event there. I've seen a lot of different cultural fests and international festivals, but never one centered around the history and cultural legacy of Juneteenth. For me, it was like 'wow!' After I went to my first Juneteenth event, I started going to events every year, mostly in Atlanta. By 2017, it just dropped on my spirit that I was going to do one here in Greenville.
TG: So, Juneteenth GVL and the Megafest has taken a while to develop. How did it come about?
RH: I had a big vision of what I wanted to bring to the city. After being in Atlanta seeing events on a big scale, I didn't want to come here and do something small. I really wanted to do it big. We've been able to build some great relationships with city council as well as some businesses and other entities across the city. And having us become a nonprofit makes it easier to move into certain spaces. Last year, we partnered with Vernon Veteran Services, a nonprofit that is a veteran outreach program. But this year, we officially became our own separate 501c-3. Our first year, it went from concept to Falls Park, now we plan on it being much bigger.
TG: The city has signed on as a major partner this year, right?
RH: We were new to this, so the city was very hesitant to give us Falls Park last year, not really understanding fully what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. They worked very closely with us through every step of the process to get to a place where they were comfortable. After last year, they said ‘I think you guys are ready for downtown,’ so it's been quite a blessing. The great thing is that the city has warmed up to it and am happy that it's here and happy that we’re the ones doing it. We have a partnership with the Peace Center for using their facilities and with Camperdown. It's partnerships and alliances … and permits.
TG: What do you hope the city’s support of the celebration will mean?
RH: For African Americans here in the community, I think that it represents a lot. What African Americans really want here is equity, economic mobility. They want access. In the city, the percentage of African Americans is actually declining and I feel like one of the reasons is that there are not as many opportunities for those who graduate college and want to come back. They're attracted to places like Atlanta and Charlotte, to larger cities nearby. So, it’s important to bring events into the community that let people know we do have a vibrant African American culture here, we do have resources here available for things that they support. I want Juneteenth to not only be a festival to entertain people for a day, but I want it to be impactful well outside of the holiday.
TG: What do you say to people who don’t look like you, people who may be reluctant, who might feel like it’s not their holiday to celebrate?
RH: Like that it is a “Black holiday,” celebrated because it was a Black thing that happened? But in order for this holiday to even come, half a million Americans had to die in the Civil War. If you really know the history or really understand it, there's no denying that this is one the most significant holidays in our nation's history. The most American holiday. It's just that it happened on the backs of African American slaves and some folks just don't want to make that connection or association. But that's just the fact of the matter. I mean it is a very American holiday.
TG: You moved here after your military service, right? Tell us a little about that.
RH: I was in the Navy, serving alongside Marines as a medic, a corpsman and a surgical tech. I’ve never been under way on a ship. I spent most of my time as part of a support group with the Marine Corps. The Navy does all the medical care for the Marines.
TG: Did you always have an interest in medical work?
RH: My mother was a nurse and she always had a great job, never laid off, so I decided I would go into the medical field. That ultimately led me here to have my own shop, and I’m doing pretty well.
TG: Since we’re talking here at your office, explain a little about the business.
RH: I've been an entrepreneur and in business for 20 years. Crescent Surgical Supply has two offices, the one here and one in Los Angeles. My father and my brothers ... my family, they work from there. Our distribution comes out of this location. We’re surgical supply brokers, wholesalers in medical supplies around the country and several locations internationally. We get surplus products that have limited shelf life remaining. Oftentimes these products would end up going into landfills once they expire, because hospitals can’t use them. We purchase them directly from facilities at reduced rates and redistribute them to other places that are going to need them right away.
TG: You do some philanthropy, too, right?
RH: We help facilitate mission trips for doctors and other private medical organizations around the world. Every year we donate thousands of pounds of medical equipment and supplies that pass expiration dates on our shelves or come in already outdated. We can get them to organizations that get them to third-world countries where they can be used.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: 15 Minutes With …. Reuben Hays of Juneteenth GVL
