I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done a #Juneteenth playlist for GBN. This year it shares a Sunday with Father’s Day.
While I didn’t grow up with the holiday, it’s believed to be the oldest African-American holiday, with annual celebrations on June 19th in some parts of the country dating back to 1866. Well.
Since becoming aware of it, I’ve been all-in for years. As a father and son, I am thrilled with the one-two holiday punch.
I’ve tried to gather a set of tunes that can be enjoyed while the grill is full of food, with folk sitting around the table, or when you’re chilling around the crib.
From its Galveston, Texas roots, is now one of five date-specific federal holidays along with New Year’s Day (January 1), Independence Day (July 4), Veterans Day (November 11), and Christmas Day (December 25).
Juneteenth will coincide with Father’s Day not only this year, but also in 2033, 2039, 2044, and 2050. It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was declared a holiday in 1986.
Do enjoy another free-wheeling and eclectic collection celebrating this uniquely American holiday by your friend and selector.
Barbara Jordan was born in 1936 in Houston, Texas to a teacher mother and Baptist preacher father. Jordan grew up to become the first African-American woman voted into the Texas Senate (1966-1972) and the first Black woman from the South elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1972-1979).
Jordan is best known for her superlative oratory skills, in particular the U.S. Judiciary Committee speech she gave in Congress almost 46 years ago to the day supporting the impeachment of Richard Nixon, as well as the Keynote address she gave at the 1976 Democratic National Convention (the first Black woman to do so in the Convention’s 144-year history).
Jordan also was the first and (so far) only Black woman to serve as Governor (albeit for one day on June 10, 1972) of any state in America. While in Congress, Jordan supported the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, legislation that required banks to lend and make services available to underserved poor and minority communities.
She also supported the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and expansion of it to cover “language minorities”; this expansion offered protection to Spanish-speaking Latinos in her home state of Texas even when opposed by the Texas Governor and Secretary of State. Jordan also authored an act that ended federal authorization of price fixing by manufacturers.
After retiring from politics in 1979, Jordan worked as a professor of Ethics at the University of Texas at Austin. Around this time, Jordan was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and eventually had to get around via wheelchair, but that did not stop her from being an active scholar and public servant.
From 1994 until her death in 1996, Jordan chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which recommended limits on immigration while also acknowledging how immigration had strengthened and continued to strengthen America.
President Bill Clinton wanted to nominate Jordan to the U.S. Supreme Court, but her health issues (which soon also included leukemia) prevented him from nominating her.
I started reading up on Barbara Jordan a few years ago because I’d always heard about her “firsts” but didn’t really didn’t have a sense of who she was or what made her formidable.
Then I listened to and watched her speeches. My. Heavens. If you haven’t heard it before, you MUST HEAR HER VOICE.
Today Good Black News wants to share the excellent online resources the National Museum of African American History and Culture has that explain and explore the legacy of Juneteenth, which is now in its 155th year. Click here for more and read below for an historical overview of Juneteenth:
On “Freedom’s Eve,” or the eve of January 1, 1863, the first Watch Night services took place. On that night, enslaved and free African Americans gathered in churches and private homes all across the country awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect.
At the stroke of midnight, prayers were answered as all enslaved people in Confederate States were declared legally free. Union soldiers, many of whom were black, marched onto plantations and across cities in the south reading small copies of the Emancipation Proclamation spreading the news of freedom in Confederate States. Only through the Thirteenth Amendment did emancipation end slavery throughout the United States.
But not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control.
As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth,” by the newly freed people in Texas.
The post-emancipation period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877) marked an era of great hope, uncertainty, and struggle for the nation as a whole. Formerly enslaved people immediately sought to reunify families, establish schools, run for political office, push radical legislation and even sue slaveholders for compensation. Given the 200+ years of enslavement, such changes were nothing short of amazing. Not even a generation out of slavery, African Americans were inspired and empowered to transform their lives and their country.
Juneteenth celebration in 1900 at Eastwoods Park. (Credit: Austin History Center)
Juneteenth marks our country’s second independence day. Although it has long celebrated in the African American community, this monumental event remains largely unknown to most Americans.
The historical legacy of Juneteenth shows the value of never giving up hope in uncertain times. The National Museum of African American History and Cultureis a community space where this spirit of hope lives on. A place where historical events like Juneteenth are shared and new stories with equal urgency are told.
According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, is branching out to find and preserve recorded sermons by Black preachers.
The Restoration Project was originally established to identify, acquire, preserve, record, and catalogue the most at-risk music from the Black gospel music tradition from the 1940s to the 1980s. In addition to preserving in digital format these gospel recordings, the archive includes press photos and press packets, taped interviews, informal photographs, tour books and programs, newspaper and magazine clippings, and sheet music.
Now the project is looking to digitize sermons that were recorded on vinyl. Some records were just a Black preacher preaching for two and a half minutes on each side and they sold half a million copies – even during the Great Depression.
“All Black preachers sing, and all Black singers preach,” notes Robert Darden, a professor of journalism, public relations and new media at Baylor and the director of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project.
“That got me thinking – nobody has been collecting the Black preaching from the Civil Rights movement, other than Dr. King. All these incredible heroes who were preaching around the rest of the country, there’s not a collection of their work. So, I met with the other folks in the Black Gospel project, and we agreed that in addition to the music, we ought to be trying to collect preaching.”
Support The Project
The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project is made possible by men and women with a zeal for preserving history. Support will help the project continue its important work. All donations are used solely to support the work of the project. Two funds have been established to support the project:
Haley Taylor Schlitz, who graduated from high school at 13 via homeschooling and completed her bachelor’s degree via Tarrant County College and Texas Woman’s University, will now pursue a law degree at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law.
The Dallas-based institution is one of nine schools that accepted Schlitz and is recognized as one of the top 50 law schools in the country. Among the other schools that accepted her were the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Howard University, and Texas Southern University.
According to newsone.com, Schlitz’s family recognized she was gifted at an early age. Her parents decided to homeschool her to give Schmitz the opportunity to learn at her own accelerated pace.
Schlitz, who was a guest on Good Morning America Wednesday, initially wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and pursue a career in medicine, but witnessing all of the inequality in our country motivated her to want to become a lawyer.
“It is my hope that I can bring my passion for addressing education equity issues, and help facilitate a program that focuses on the legal advocacy needs of underserved students and their families in accessing gifted education programs,” she wrote in a piece for Better Make Room.
“The lack of access to these programs helps promote stereotypes and keeps students of color in our K-12 schools locked in an education system that views them as the problem instead of the solution.”
According to The Defender, Fort Bend, Texas teen Nahyle Agomo has been honored by the Honey Brown Hope Foundation with its Peacekeeper Award, for working to “keep the peace” among her peers while subsequently being disciplined by her school.
Agomo was suspended from Thurgood Marshall High School after trying to de-escalate a fight between fellow students. She says school officials told her that she should have found an adult, and then she was suspended for three days for “disruptive conduct.”
“My intent was to stop a pregnant student and her unborn child from getting hurt. The district ignored my intentions and wrongfully suspended me,” the honor student said.
It’s a glaring contrast, The Defender reported, that Honey Brown Hope Foundation founder and activist Tammie Lang Campbell says is indicative of what is wrong in the Fort Bend Independent School District, as the district continues to unjustly penalize Black students.
According to a six-year study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR), Black students in Fort Bend ISD were six times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than white students and four times as likely to be placed on in-school suspension.
During the 2016-2017 school year, African-American students represented about 64 percent of all students who received out-of-school suspensions in FBISD, even though only 28 percent of the FBISD student population is African-American.
“Fort Bend ISD refuses to hold their administrators accountable for not being onsite to deescalate the incident, but they insist on upholding the wrongful three-day suspension of an honor student who should have been praised – not punished,” Campbell said.
Campbell says her organization decided to honor Agomo with the Peacekeeper Award for her effort to bring about peace among peers.
“Even though the district will not remove the suspension from my record, the outcome is better because of The Honey Brown Hope Foundation’s help to not only have my side of the story added to my official record, but also because of them giving me the Peacekeeper Award,” added Agomo.
Missouri City native Yolanda Ford made history on Saturday as she became not only the first woman to be elected Mayor of Missouri City but the first African-American, male or female to be elected mayor.
“I am so proud that the residents of Missouri City have elected me as their mayor,” Ford said in a statement. “After having served on the city council for the past five years, and as a lifelong resident, I am deeply invested in the well-being and growth of Missouri City, and I look forward to working with citizens, the city council and others toward its betterment.”
Ford won her runoff election against incumbent mayor Allen Owen, receiving 51.9 percent of the vote. Owen had been the mayor of Missouri City since 1994.
The newly elected mayor graduated from John Foster Dulles High School. She earned a bachelor of science degree in psychology from the University of Houston and a Master of Architecture degree from Prairie View A&M University. She will be sworn in on December 17.
A runoff election was mandated after no candidate received half of the vote in the November 6 election. Owen had won 36.06 percent of the vote while Ford had won 34.96 percent. Fred G. Taylor, the third candidate on the ballot came away with 28.98 percent of the vote.
Andrea Roberts, assistant professor of urban planning in the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University, has started a project to provide comprehensive documentation of the so-called “Freedom Colonies” in Texas. Freedom colonies were self-sufficient, all-Black settlements that former slaves established after they were freed at the end of the Civil War.
“Africans became hash marks on census reports when they reached America and were enslaved, leaving them, ultimately, without an understanding of their heritage or connection to their homeland,” Dr. Roberts said. “These self-sufficient freedom colonies were established under the most difficult of circumstances by industrious, intelligent and organized people acting much like current-day city planners — and some of their descendants are performing the work of preservationists today.”
Andrea Roberts (photo via researchgate.net)
Dr. Roberts has identified more than 550 freedom colonies established by the almost 200,000 newly freed African-Americans living in Texas just after the abolition of slavery. Today, some of these freedom colonies still exist as communities and host festivals and celebrations while maintaining connections with the past. However, little evidence remains that some of these colonies ever existed. The project, The Texas Freedom Colonies Project, aims to help African-American Texans reclaim their unrecognized and unrecorded heritage and empower city planners to plan and preserve communities.
“This [project] is about changing the dynamics so that we’re focusing on accountability, and helping people define and reclaim their communities,” Dr. Roberts said. “It’s also about realizing that African-Americans built their own communities, and they should see themselves as part of urban planning, an important field where they are more commonly considered the subject.”
Ieshia Champs stands at center with her children (left to right) E’mani, 5, Kaleb, 8, Khassidy,11, Davien, 12, and David, 14. (Photo: Richard Holman Photography)
Ieshia Champs never could have imagined what she would achieve when she grew up, as she bounced around family homes, entered into the foster care system, and had her first child at age 19. But nearly 14 years and a total of five kids later, this mom is about to graduate from law school after a difficult journey — and she says her faith led her through it all.
The 33-year-old, who is originally from Port Arthur, Texas, has been through a lot. However, from the looks of her beautiful family in her recent graduation photos, it seems like the more trying times might have been worth her consequent path. From leading her to Houston and to a church that provided her with guidance, as well as the people she would quickly call family, Champs is now seeing that her earlier struggles are coming full circle. And it all goes back to one Child Protective Services caseworker, Gail Covington, who picked her and her siblings up when Champs was just around 7 years old.
“I’ll never forget it,” Champs tells Yahoo Lifestyle, of the moment Covington brought them to a home outside of the chaos that the little girl was used to. “I cried so hard because I missed my familiar surroundings, even though they were horrible. And one day, I woke up in time for school. I actually had a bed to sleep in, and we had brand-new clothes on the floor. It was then that I realized my friends had no idea about this type of life.”
What Champs explains as the “drug-filled environment” where she lived with her mom was the norm for everyone in their neighborhood. Once she had an idea of another type of lifestyle, she began to wonder what she could do about all of the people left behind without help. Her teachers introduced her to the idea of becoming an attorney and providing a service similar to what Covington provided Champs. However, she would eventually return to a toxic environment soon thereafter.
Being adopted by a maternal uncle, Champs says that she and her siblings eventually ended up back in an apartment with their mom — which ended up leading her down a bad path. “We really didn’t have much guidance,” Champs explains. “My sister ended up having her first baby at 14. I ended up dropping out of school my 10th or 11th grade year, and I ran across my kid’s father. We ended up having our first child, and then we had a second. And it just kept going.”
It was when Champs had three children and a fourth on the way that her life began to change. Her sister enticed her to attend a service at the Ministers for Christ Christian Center in Houston, led by Bishop Richard and Louise Holman, who she now refers to as dad and mom. Champs recalls a service where Louise, who serves as a prophetess, called the mother of five up to the front of the church and offered up information about her future. Louise said that God wanted Champs to go back to school to get her GED, so she could eventually follow her dream of becoming a lawyer — a dream that Champs had never shared with Louise.
“She told me that God would take care of me,” Champs says of Louise’s encouragement. “During that same year — it was 2009 — I ended up having a house fire, I lost everything that I had. I got laid off from my job, the father to two of my children died of cancer while I was seven months pregnant, I literally tried to kill myself, and I ended up going back to get my GED.”
Champs credits the inspiration and prayers from the Holmans for her getting an associate’s degree in paralegal studies at Houston Community College, and a bachelor’s degree at the University of Houston. Both degrees eventually brought her to the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, where she’ll be graduating in May. Although receiving her Juris Doctor degree was far from easy, she commends her five children for making it possible.
Giving her time to do both her work and rest, Champs says that her eldest son, who is now 14, has been amazing at taking the other four children — ranging in age from 5 to 12 — to a quiet place in the house to do activities or eat a snack. In order to honor this commitment, she decided to include them all in her graduation photos, which were taken by Bishop Richard.
“I’ve been attending Ministers for Christ for about 10 years, and [Richard] is not just my bishop,” Champs says. “He’s a professional photographer, and he knows my story. So I wanted him to be very active in that.”
Champs’s children pose proudly around her. (Photo: Richard Holman Photography)
Now, as the bishop’s photos circulate around the internet, Champs’s older children are beginning to understand what “going viral” means. However, Champs remains focused on what she wants to do with her doctorate once she passes the bar exam, which is to become a general attorney with a specialization in family law and juvenile law, and eventually become a judge.
“I feel like with what I’ve been through as a child and in my upbringing, I can probably help some of these juveniles who may feel like there’s no hope for them,” Champs explains. “I want to be the one to fight for those children who are in these horrible living arrangements. To try to help them reconcile with the family, or if not, give them the same opportunity that I had.”
via thegrio.com
On Saturday, the Houston Museum of African American Culture opened an exhibit dedicated to the life and death of Sandra Bland.
The 28-year old was pulled over for a minor traffic violation, arrested, and found dead in her Waller County, Texas jail cell three days after in July 2015. Although her death was ruled a suicide, activists and others criticized the jail’s handling of Bland.
On opening night, visitors were able to walk through the exhibit featuring smiling images from Bland’s life before sitting in a makeshift car to watch footage from the traffic stop that ultimately led to her death.
For her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, sitting in that car was the hardest part of the exhibit. “It felt like when that officer was walking, he was walking towards you,” she told local station KTRK.
Reed-Veal added that she felt like her daughter was telling her story even after her death. “People seeing this exhibit should say to themselves hold on, I’m going to think a little differently about the way I do things—with my interactions with everyone but more so police officers,” she said.
Touching the lives of those who visit
The artists who worked on the exhibit clearly did their homework. Many of the pieces give a glimpse into the type of woman Bland was at the time of her death. “I’m discovering we were very similar. She was a woman who took over 50 selfies, she had very healthy self-esteem, was in a sorority, educated, young had a future ahead of her,” said Lee Carrier, the designer behind the central mural in the exhibit.
Visitors have also been blown away by the emotion of the exhibit.
“The struggles that African American’s face, whether light, brown, or black as it’s called, our realities are sometimes different than our counterparts,” visitor Erinn Miller told the station. “It doesn’t matter if you’re educated or not educated, from the city or the country. Sandra Bland was a classic case.”
Visitors will be able to see the exhibit from now until Feb. 28. Source: https://thegrio.com/2018/02/05/sandra-bland-exhibit-opens-houston-area-museum/
Barbara Jordan was born in 1936 in Houston, Texas to a teacher mother and Baptist preacher father. Jordan grew up to become the first African-American woman voted into the Texas Senate (1966-1972) and the first Black woman from the South elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1972-1979).
From 1994 until her death in 1996, Jordan chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which recommended limits on immigration while also acknowledging how immigration had strengthened and continued to strengthen America.
