What Does It Mean To Be Free?
The first federally-recognized Emancipation Day is a good day for white people to listen to what this holiday means
Perhaps some of you hoped that I would come up with a banger of a post on this historic day, but the more I thought about it, the more I preferred to highlight the words of others. If you know someone who would enjoy the content below, please:
I don’t think there has been a new federal holiday in my lifetime since Martin Luther King, Jr. day was established by Congress in 1983. I’m pleased and happy to welcome this one. But instead of telling you what I think it means, I urge you to explore and think about the story of slavery, and the incomplete story of Black freedom, for yourself.
Here are a couple of suggestions: I invite you to leave your own in the comments.
One of the first podcasts I published was a conversation with historian Kerri Greenidge about her new book, "The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family" (November 3, 2022.)
Add the three-episode podcast Reclaimed: The Story of Mamie Till Mobley, hosted by historian Leah Wright Rigueur, a three-part history of a woman whose son Emmett became the face of the civil rights movement because she refused to back down. (ABC News, 2022.)
Go subscribe to historian Martha S. Jones’s Substack, “Hard Histories,” as an award winning scholar grapples with how slavery is intertwined with all of our institutions. It’s free, it’s smart, and it may even cause you to look at your school, your church, your museum, and your community differently. What is your hard history?
In preparation for an upcoming podcast release with historian and novelist Tiya Miles, order her new novel, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts (Random House, 2023.) And you can celebrate Pride at the same time, because this wonderful book about the complexity of history and memory is now a Lambda Literary Award finalist! And I have another interview in the can with historian Nell Painter: we’ll be talking about her wonderful book, The History of White People (W.W. Norton, 2011.)
Listen to Nina Simone sing “I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel To Be Free),” a live at the Montreux KJazz festival in 1976—and remember that before this woman became a blues singer she was a classically trained pianist who was refused admission to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia because she was Black.
Short takes:
Jay Kuo summarizes the post-Miami indictment fallout in the GOP on his Substack, The Status Kuo. You have probably already figured out for yourself that defenders are more numerous than those condemning Trump but that the latter group is more prestigious. When you have people like John Bolton saying that the Democrats got this one right, it’s more persuasive to the GOP money class than the dimwits who keep saying that, ya know, bathroom doors lock. Of course, except for Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the presidential primary candidates are still waffling, the morons. “The result is that you have candidates like Mike Pence saying he can’t defend what Trump did but that the system is over-politicized,” Kuo writes. “Gov. Ron DeSantis is not saying much at all about what Trump did, but he still decries the `weaponization’ of the Justice Department.” The GOP is, he continues, “a party that wants to rid itself of Trump but can’t find a way to do it without losing its base of supporters.” Just say no, boys. (June 18, 2023)
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed legislation to reduce the 4% grocery tax in that state to 3%—the question is, why does Alabama tax groceries at all? It is one of three states that do, and according to Patrick Derrington of the Alabama Political Reporter, “The reduction comes after decades of attempts to reduce or eliminate the grocery tax by many politicians and organizations.” But here is hte astonishing news buried in this report: “The legislation also freezes local taxes on groceries which can often get up to a 10 percent tax” (emphasis mine.) That means, in some counties in this GOP-ruled state, for every $100 grocery bill, customers pay an extra $13.00. Tell your Republican friends that the next time they bellow about Democratic tax policies. Alabama has a poverty rate of 16.1%, the seventh highest in the nation. (June 16, 2023)
At The New Republic, Liza Featherstone reviews the career of James Watt, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, who died last month at 85. Watt, Featherstone writes, actively turned Republicans away from environmental policies that the GOP had previously embraced. “Some of Watt’s specific arguments and beliefs—and most of his policy efforts—failed to catch on, but much of his rhetoric, as well as his legacy of anti-environmentalist culture war, endures,” Featherstone points out. “We have Watt to thank for the fact that Republicans today view fossil fuels as an American institution and for our utter lack of national consensus on climate change and environmental protection.” (June 16, 2023)
California a Slave State* (Yale, 6/23) turns to the voices of the enslaved to tell 250 years of slavery and slave revolts in California, from Spanish missions , indentured CA Native Americans, Russians shipped Alaska Natives for otter trade, convict labor at San Quentin, children at Indian Boarding Schools, kidnapped Chinese child prostitutes, modern human and sex trafficking at sweat shops, marijuana grows, hotels & online unfree brothels. They fought, fled, filed lawsuits and resisted. www.jeanpfaelzer.com
Really good, Claire. And necessary. For years, I've been saying that you can't overestimate the racism of the United States of America.