Why Juneteenth? Let’s Ask Black Texas

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this national live call-in special: The history. The party. The food. Black Texans school us on the holiday they created.

This Juneteenth, host Kai Wright is joined by Pulitzer-Prize winning historian and Harvard law professor, Annette Gordon-Reed, to break down the history behind the newest federal holiday, and help take calls from Black Texans about what it means to them. Plus, Ms. Opal Lee, retired teacher, counselor and activist known as the "grandmother of Juneteenth," checks in as she's moving between Juneteenth celebrations in Fort Worth, Texas. And Houston Public Media reporter, Cory McGinnis, calls in from the "150th Juneteenth Celebration" festival in Houston's Emancipation Park. And, food writer and host of the podcast Hot Grease, Nicole A. Taylor, tells us about her new cookbook, Watermelon and Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations.

A special thanks to Houston Public Media, KERA-Dallas, and Texas Public Radio for partnering with us on this episode.

Companion listening for this episode:

Juneteenth, an Unfinished Business (6/26/2020)

As the nation grappled with a reckoning during the summer of 2020, we paused to celebrate Juneteenth, for Black liberation and the ongoing birth of the United States.

“The United States of Anxiety” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on WNYC.org/anxiety or tell your smart speakers to play WNYC.

We want to hear from you! Connect with us on Twitter @WNYC using the hashtag #USofAnxiety or email us at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Happy June Teeth. I'm Kai Wright from WNYC and this is a special national live
0:06.1	broadcast of United States of anxiety. We're a show about the unfinished
0:09.8	business of our history and how we can break its grip on our future and
0:13.3	tonight we are celebrating some history live on air with all of you. I'm with
0:18.1	our producer Regina DeHear. Hi, hi. And Regina, who have you got booked for us
0:22.0	tonight? We're connecting with Miss Oble Lee who's often called the grandmother
0:25.6	of June Teeth. Plutzer prize winning historian Annette Gordon Reed will explain
0:30.0	the holiday's backstory and will even hear live from a party in Houston's
0:34.1	emancipation park. That's right. We are partnering with Houston Public Media, KERA Dallas
0:39.7	and Texas Public Radio to center the voice of Texas. But we want to hear from all of you
0:45.6	around the country. How are you celebrating? What's the holiday mean to you personally?
0:50.0	That's all coming up on the United States of anxiety.
1:00.0	Do you know what June Teeth is about? I don't know a lot of you.
1:02.4	Um, I want to get it wrong. That's what I'm so scared of, Hanson. It's actually about the
1:06.1	freedom of slaves and how we are now, quote unquote, liberating. I'm actually a Canadian,
1:12.8	but from what I understand, when slavery ended in the United States, they didn't let
1:17.6	certain people in the South now till later on. So what does that mean to you? I think it's
1:23.0	a seven-year-old direction. I ain't gonna lie. We stay in slavery. We stay in slavery
1:27.2	in the United States. Well, I think that's really great. Like, we have, like,
1:30.6	President's Day off. What is that doing for us? So I love that we have June Teeth off,
1:34.0	because that's a day for us. Will you be celebrating June Teeth this year? Yeah. Oh yeah.
1:38.0	I'm going on a little trip with my parents because also it's Father's Day, so we're going to,
	...

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