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“America didn’t free the slaves; the slaves freed America.” Michael Harriot breaks down the real origins of Juneteenth and why it should mean so much to everyone. TheGrio Daily is an original podcast from TheGrio Black Podcast Network
Full Transcript:
Announcer: You are now listening to The Griot’s Black Podcast Network, Black Culture Amplified.
Michael Harriot: Welcome to the first episode of The Griot Daily, the only podcast Black enough to debut on Juneteenth. I mean, after all, that’s kind of like when Black people made their debut. Right, right. I’m Michael Harriet, world famous Wypipologist , and this is the Grio Daily.
So we’re gonna be here every day, and we’re not gonna be talking about the news as much as we are going to be talking about the ideas from the news. We’re gonna be here for you every morning to download wherever you get your podcast. I hope it’s the Grio app giving you in our village a daily dose of what you should be thinking and talking about today. It’s not necessarily the news. Right? It’s the ideas that we should be talking about. We’re not going to be just regurgitating what happened and happened in Washington or what Kim Kardashian is doing. We’re going to be digesting and thinking deeply and sometimes funnily about what white people are doing what Black people should be doing and what America and the world is doing today.
We’re going to be talking about, of course, Juneteenth. You can’t just start on Juneteenth and not talk about Juneteenth. And specifically, we’re going to be talking about like. Is Juneteenth a Black holiday? You know, white people, I heard someone say that Juneteenth was like the first Black holiday.
I don’t know what they thought MLK Day was, but you know, white people like MLK, you know, after he died. Is Juneteenth a Black holiday? I mean, it’s July 4th. Independence Day, a white holiday? I mean, first of all, like, I just call it the Fourth of July because we know it’s not really everybody’s Independence Day.
I mean, like, most Black people weren’t free on July 4th, 1776. And you know what? Here’s the thing you probably didn’t know, or maybe you did. America’s birthday isn’t even July 4th, 1776. We declared our independence on July 2nd, 1776. John Adams even wrote his wife and said the second day of July 1776 will be the most epic day in the history of America. I believe it will be celebrated by the succeeding generations as the Great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parades, which shows games, guns, bells, bonfires, and illumination from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.
And you know, we never did it. Right? Cause like they forgot like by the next year, literally they have a got like America’s birthday was on July 2nd, so they just, just chose arbitrarily July 4th, although July 4th was the actual day that the declaration of independence got back from the printers, because you know, they didn’t have real good wifi back then.
And now it’s easy to Google “Juneteenth” and find out what it’s about, but it’s about when soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 and told the slaves that they were free. I mean, well, kind of, right? Cause see, like a lot of slaves were free already then. And you know, like when they found out that they were going to have to pick their own cotton or whatever they grow in Texas, where they grow guns, like cowboy hats, cowboy boots, you know, the white people was crying and the slaves were roasted the hell out of them, but they should have been happy.
Cause here’s the thing that I believe, right? I don’t believe that Juneteenth just freed the slaves because the slaves actually freed America. And that’s why Juneteenth is a holiday for everybody, right? So let’s examine what I’m talking about.
So first of all, white people didn’t free the slaves. That’s just a fallacy. Like the slaves freed themselves, right? Up to 500, 000 slaves freed themselves during the Civil War. Like, that’s more than the Emancipation Proclamation freed, which is, you know, zero because it didn’t really mean anything. Texas only had about 200, 000 enslaved people by the time they read the Juneteenth Proclamation.
You know, during the Civil War, when those slaves would free themselves, they would run toward the Union line, right? And they say, I’m free now. Right. And because of the concept of war, like you can’t just, you know, take things and steal things from the people you’re fighting against. They created this special category for enslaved people who freed themselves.
Right. Because they were technically, you know, according to the constitution, according to the laws of the United States. They were technically, you know, all those Confederates’ property. So when they freed themselves and made it to the Union lines, they became technically contraband. And so all over America during the Civil War, there were these contraband camps filled with formerly enslaved people who had freed themselves.
And there were more in those contraband camps than… there were who were free on Juneteenth, so don’t let them fool you that like they read something in Galveston, Texas, and then all of the slaves were freed. Nah, they didn’t free the slaves. Right. And the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free the slaves.
The Slaves were actually free technically by the 13th Amendment. Now what’s interesting about the 13th Amendment is that Congress had already passed a law that gave enslaved people rights, but Abraham Lincoln was dead, his vice president was real racist, and he vetoed that Civil Rights Act.
“The bill In effect, proposes a discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy, and patriotic foreigners, white people, and in favor of the Negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, The avenues to freedom and intelligence have just now been suddenly opened. He must, of necessity from his previous unfortunate condition of servitude, be less informed.”
After the slaves were freed by the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment made them citizens. And the interesting thing about that is, all over America, there were white people who benefited from that. See, before… The slaves freed themselves, America had never defined citizenship. Like, if you were a white person in South Carolina who was, you know, Eastern European, you might not be able to vote. So, it was a bunch of different kind of people who had been disenfranchised, who couldn’t vote, who weren’t considered citizens till the slaves freed themselves.
And the 14th Amendment gave America a definition of citizenship. Now, we call it birthright citizenship. Now, if you’re born in America, you’re a citizen. All of the enslaved people benefited from that. But a lot of white people did, too. It meant a lot of white people could vote. Because, again, the slaves freed America, but that’s not the only thing, right?
In that 14th Amendment was a little called clause called the Due Process Clause. Now, you know, since America wrote its constitution, they said, I guess certain things you can’t do. to people, right? But it was reiterated and expanded in the 14th amendment, right? There were certain things that you could not do to a person who was an American.
You couldn’t violate their constitutional rights. You had to go through a process that is defined by the law before you strip them of their rights. Slaves gave that to America. You’re welcome. And not just Citizenship, not just the Due Process Clause. For the first time, we said, Hey, you remember all those people, those different kinds of white people we were talking about who couldn’t vote?
Non landowners, people from certain countries, for the first time, they were able to vote because of the 15th Amendment. It said you just can’t deny somebody their right to vote because of their race, or their color, or their origin. We did that. We gave that to y’all. We freed America. And that ain’t even the only thing, right?
During the Civil War, this man named Robert Smalls, first of all, he was like real smart and he was working on a riverboat as an enslaved person. He was with some other Black people who were working on that riverboat. And one night they told the Confederates who, you know, we’re in charge of the riverboat.
“Hey, um, hey, can our families come and visit us tonight? You know y’all off right?” Like I don’t know if y’all knew this like they got the weekends off during the Civil War So anyway, Robert Smalls got him and his homeboys families to come visit him You know the Confederate white supremacist said it was okay because you know, I mean what it’s gonna do these slaves What the hell are they gonna do?
But what they didn’t know is Robert Smalls had been watching them and he had, you know, he had some of their uniforms and like, “where my hat?” “I don’t know, sir. It must be fell overboard.” And so when they let the families of those enslaved peoples come visit Robert and his homeboys, Robert dressed in those Confederate uniforms and then he dressed his crew in Confederate uniforms, and as their families were on that riverboat, he had already learned all of the passwords and the signals that the confederate army used and he drove that thing right to the union army. And it’s made him a hero, right? I mean, amongst us, right? Like the white people still wouldn’t give him, uh, make him an officer until like years after the Civil War.
They wouldn’t make him, uh, they wouldn’t give him a pension. But one thing happened, right? Because he was a hero and because, many people don’t know that South Carolina was like majority Black until like the 1940s. He was elected to Congress. And first, we have to remember, they had to rewrite each state’s constitution.
And Robert Smalls was on that constitutional convention committee for South Carolina. And you know what he put in there? He created the first compulsory public education system in America. But we don’t talk about that all the time, but because these slaves freed themselves, Robert Small specifically, he created the first compulsory constitutionally enshrined public education system in America.
The reason all of the white people in America get public schools is because of a Black formerly enslaved man who freed himself. Again, white people didn’t free the slaves. The slaves freed themselves, and then they freed America.
Thank you for listening. We’ll be here every morning for you. And, you know, I’m gonna end every day with a saying from Black America that you should feel in the depth of your soul.
“You know you can’t eat everybody, macaroni.” Thank you for listening. See you tomorrow. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review. Download the Grio app, subscribe to the show, and share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, suggestions, and compliments to podcasts@thegrio.com.
Announcer: You are now listening to the Grio’s Black Podcast Network, Black Culture Amplified. What’s going on everybody. Panama Jackson here, and I’m the host of the Dear Culture podcast on the griot Black podcast network. And I’m telling you to check us out every Thursday on the Grio’s app to make sure you get that new, amazing, original Black content, that awesome creativity.
Check us out. Dear Culture, Panama, Jackson out.
