WILSON, N.C. — A car repair shop in Wilson is receiving major backlash after comments made by employees about Juneteenth were caught on surveillance video and widely shared online.
The video, taken at Synergy Auto Care on Wednesday, shows a moment in the shop’s waiting area that many viewers found disrespectful to the significance of the federally recognized holiday.
In the footage, a customer asks, “Why are the banks closed tomorrow?”
An employee replies, “Juneteenth, a new holiday they added a few years ago.”
Another customer responds, “Okie dokie, then,” prompting laughter from a different employee, who adds, “I know, right.”
Immediately afterward, a Black woman sitting nearby stands up, visibly upset. “Give me my [expletive] truck. Pull my truck around. Give me, give me my truck,” she says before walking out of the shop.
The woman’s swift reaction and the nonchalant remarks preceding it have sparked a wave of criticism and conversation about respect, cultural awareness, and accountability.
Josh Dougherty, the owner of Synergy Auto Care, initially posted the surveillance footage to the business’s Facebook page along with a message attempting to explain the incident. The post was later deleted after what he described as a flood of negative comments.
“It was overflowed and flooded. It was just nothing but hate,” Dougherty said. “So yes, I took the post down immediately, unshared it from social media, and shut the page down.”
According to Dougherty, two employees who were not involved in the incident have since left the company after receiving death threats. As for the employee whose comment was heard in the video, Dougherty says she misunderstood the significance of Juneteenth altogether.
“She was thinking the holiday had a whole other meaning,” he told reporters. “She was believing it had something to do with school letting out or teenagers—she didn’t know it marked the end of slavery.”
Juneteenth, observed every June 19, commemorates the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that the Civil War had ended and enslaved people were now free. This occurred more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued. The holiday became a federal observance in 2021, but has been celebrated by Black communities across the country for over 150 years.
News outlets, including WRAL attempted to reach the woman who left the shop. Family members said she was not available for an interview. A video posted to her social media account explaining her decision to leave has also been deleted.
Online, many have rallied behind the woman’s actions.
"Let's all NORMALIZE walking away from ANYTHING that doesn't SERVE YOU," one person wrote.
"Salute to you, Queen for standing on business!" another social media user said.
Dougherty said no one has been fired and noted that the customer had brought her vehicle to Synergy Auto Care in the past. Since the incident, the shop’s ratings on platforms like Google and Yelp have dropped significantly. While Google has removed some of the flagged reviews, others remain—something Dougherty says has been a hard but necessary lesson. He adds that he has begun taking steps to better educate his staff on Juneteenth and other culturally significant observances.
“She doesn’t have a platform to say how sorry she is,” Dougherty said of the employee who made the remarks. “She tells me every day she wishes she had known more. She wishes it hadn’t happened that way.”
As the conversation continues, community members say the incident serves as a reminder that recognizing holidays like Juneteenth requires more than closing doors—it calls for honoring the history and the people behind it.
