Loading summary
Transcript95 lines
- [00:14]
Amy Goodman
From New York. This is Democracy now for me.
- [00:17]
Clint Smith
When I think of Juneteenth, part of what I think about is both the both handedness of it, that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them. And then at the same time celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things that this country has ever done.
- [00:41]
Amy Goodman
Today a democracy Now Special to Mark Juneteenth the federal holiday commemorating June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned of their freedom more than two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Proclamation. We'll speak to Clint Smith, author of how the Word Is A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Then to the pioneering musical artist Rhiannon Giddens, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar, about Omar Ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa who was sold into slavery in the 1800s.
- [01:23]
Rhiannon Giddens
It's just so amazing that Omar's story has been is being lifted by this opera, being lifted by the exhibition of this work and more and more people are knowing about him because the whole point for me was to complicate the again the complication to complicate the American narrative, like who gets to say that they represent the American story.
- [01:45]
Amy Goodman
Rhiannon Giddens was a founding member of the Grammy winning black string band. That Carolina Chocolate drops her banjo playing can also be heard on Beyonce's hit single Texas Hold'.
- [01:57]
Joe Biden
Em.
- [01:57]
Amy Goodman
All that and more coming up. Welcome to democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Today a Democracy now special on this, the newly created Juneteenth federal holiday, which marks the end of slavery in the United States. The Juneteenth commemoration dates back to the last days of the Civil War when Union soldiers landed in Galveston, Texas. It was June 19, 1865, with news that the war had ended and enslaved people learned they were freed. It was two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. In 2021, President Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth the first new federal holiday since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The day after Biden signed the legislation, I spoke to the writer and poet Clint Smith, author of the how the Word Is a Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. I began by asking him about traveling to Galveston, Texas and his feelings on Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday.
- [03:13]
Clint Smith
As you mentioned, I went to Galveston, Texas. I've been writing this book for four years. And I went two years ago, and it was marking the 40th anniversary of when Texas had made Juneteenth a state holiday. And it was the Al Edwards, the late Al Edwards Sr. Is the state legislator, black state legislator, who made possible and advocated for the legislation that turned Juneteenth into a holiday, state holiday in Texas. And so I went in part because I wanted to spend time with people who were the actual descendants of those who had been freed by Mason General Gordon Granger's General Order Number three. And it was a really remarkable moment because I was in this place, on this island, on this land, with people for whom Juneteenth was not an abstraction, it was not a performance, it was not merely a symbol. It was part of their tradition, it was part of their lineage. It was an heirloom that had been passed down, that had made their lives possible. And so I think I gained a more intimate sense of what that holiday meant and to sort of broaden, broaden out more generally. You spoke to how it was more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and it was an additional two months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, effectively ending the Civil War. So it wasn't only two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It was an additional two months after the Civil War was effectively over. And so for me, when I think of Juneteenth, part of what I think about is both. The both endedness of it, that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them, and then at the same time, celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things that this country has ever done. And I think what we're experiencing right now is a sort of marathon of cognitive dissonance in the way that is reflective of the black experience as a whole. Because we are in a moment where we had the first new federal holiday in over 40 years, in a moment that is. That is important to celebrate the Juneteenth and to celebrate the end of slavery and to have it recognized as a national holiday. And at the same time that that is happening, we have a state sanctioned effort across state legislatures across the country that is attempting to prevent teachers from teaching the very thing that helps young people understand the context from which Juneteenth emerges. And so I think that we recognize that as a symbol, Juneteenth is not that it matters, that it is important, but it is clearly not enough. And I think what the fact that Juneteenth has happened is reflective of a shift in our public consciousness, but also the work that black Texans and black people across this country have done for decades to make this moment possible.
- [06:04]
Amy Goodman
And can you explain more what happened in Galveston in 1865 and even as you point out, what the Emancipation Proclamation actually did two and a half years before?
- [06:17]
Clint Smith
Right. So the Emancipation Proclamation is often a widely misunderstood document. So it did not sort of wholesale free the enslaved people throughout the Union. It did not free enslaved people in the Union. In fact, there were several border states that were part of the Union that continued to keep their enslaved laborer states like Kentucky, states like Delaware, states like Missouri. And what it did was it was a military edict that was attempting to free enslaved people in Confederate territory. But the only way that that edict would be enforced is if Union soldiers went and took that territory. And so part of what many enslavers realized, and realized correctly, was that Texas would be one of the last frontiers that Union soldiers would be able to come in and enforce the Emancipation Proclamation if they ever made it there in the first place. Because this was two years prior to the end of the Civil War. And so you had enslavers from Virginia and from North Carolina, from all of these states in the upper south, who brought their enslaved laborers and relocated to Texas in ways that increased the population of enslaved people in Texas by the tens of thousands. And so when Gordon Granger comes to Texas, he is making clear and letting people know that the Emancipation Proclamation had been enacted in ways that because of the topography of Texas and because of how spread out and rural and far apart from different ecosystems of information many people were, a lot of enslaved people didn't know that the Emancipation Proclamation had happened. And some didn't even know that General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox two months prior. And so part of what this is doing is making clear to the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas that they had actually been granted freedom two and a half years prior and that the war that this was all fought over had ended two months before.
- [08:04]
Amy Goodman
During the ceremony making Juneteenth a federal holiday, President Biden got down on his knee to greet opal Lee, the 94 year old activist known as the grandmother of Juneteenth. This is Biden speaking about Lee as
- [08:19]
Joe Biden
a child growing up in Texas, she and her family would celebrate Juneteenth. On Juneteenth, 1939, when she was 12 years old, a white mob torched her family home. But such hate never stopped her any more than it stopped the vast majority of you I'm looking at from this podium. Over the course of decades, she's made it her mission to see that this day came. It was almost a singular mission. She's walked for miles and miles, literally and figuratively, to bring attention to Juneteenth, to make this day possible.
- [09:03]
Amy Goodman
And this is Opal Lee speaking at Harvard School of Public Health.
- [09:07]
Opal Lee
I don't want people to think Juneteenth is just one day. There is too much educational components. We have too much to do. I even advocate that we do Juneteenth, that we celebrate freedom from the 19th of June to the 4th of July. We weren't free on the 4th of July, 1776. That would be celebrating freedom, you understand, if we were able to do that.
- [09:39]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
And that is Opal Lee considered the grandmother of Juneteenth and Clint.
- [09:46]
Amy Goodman
One of the things you do in your book is you introduce us to grassroots activists. Even this doesn't come from the top. This comes from years of organizing, as you point out, in Galveston itself, and with people likenot that there's anyone like Opal Lee.
- [10:03]
Clint Smith
Yeah, no, absolutely. Part of what this book is doing, it is an attempt to uplift the stories of people who don't often get the attention that they deserve in how they shape the historical record. So that means the public historians who work at these historical sites and plantations, that means the museum curators, that means the activists and the organizers, people like Take him Down NOLA in New Orleans, who are. Who pushed the city council and the mayor to make possible the fact that in 2017, these statues would come down, several Confederate statues in my hometown in New Orleans. And part of when I think about someone like Ms. Opali, part of what I think about is our proximity to this period of history, right? Slavery existed for 250 years in this country and has only not existed for 150. And, you know, the way that I was taught about slavery growing up in elementary school, we were made to feel as if it was something that happened in the Jurassic age, that it was the Flintstones, the dinosaurs, and slavery, almost as if they all happened at the same time. But the woman who opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture alongside the Obama family in 2016 was the daughter of an enslaved person. Not the granddaughter or the great granddaughter or the great great granddaughter. The daughter of an enslaved person is who opened this museum, this Smithsonian, in 2016. And so there's clearly, for so many people, there are there are people who are alive today who were raised by, who knew, who were in community with, who love people who were born into intergenerational chattel bondage. And so this history that we tell ourselves was a long time ago, wasn't in fact that long ago at all. And part of what so many activists and grassroots public historians and organizers across this country recognize is that if we don't fully understand and account for this history that actually wasn't that long ago, that in the scope of human history was only just yesterday, then we won't fully understand how our contemporary landscape of inequality today, we won't understand how slavery shaped the political, economic and social infrastructure of this country. And when you have a more acute understanding of how slavery shape the infrastructure of this country, then you're able to more effectively look around you and see how the reason one community looks one way and another community looks another way is not because of the people in those communities, but is it because of what has been done to those communities generation after generation after generation? And I think that that is central to the sort of public pedagogy. And so many of these activists and organizers who have been attempting to make Juneteenth a holiday and bring attention to it as an entry point to think more wholly and honestly about the legacy of slavery have been doing.
- [12:37]
Amy Goodman
During an interview on CNN, Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio Cortez called out the 14 Republican congressmembers, all white men, who voted against making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
- [12:50]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
This is pretty consistent with, I think, the Republican base. And it' swhether it's trying to fight against teaching basic history around racism and the role of, of racism in US History to, you know, there's a direct through line from that to denying Juneteenth the day that is widely recognized and celebrated as the symbolic kind of day to represent the end of slavery in the United States.
- [13:18]
Amy Goodman
If you could respond to that, Clint Smith, and also the fact that on the same day yesterday, the Senate minority leader said they would not be supporting
- [13:27]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
the for the People act, the Voting Rights Act.
- [13:32]
Clint Smith
Absolutely. I think very clearly the critical race theory, the idea of it is being used as a boogeyman and it is being misrepresented and distorted in way by people who don't even know what critical race theory is. Right. So we should be clear that the thing that people are calling critical race theory is just that is the language that they are using to talk about the idea of teaching any sort of history that rejects the idea that America is a singularly exceptional place, and that we should not account for the history of harm that has been enacted to create opportunities in intergenerational wealth for millions of people that has come at the direct expense of millions and millions of other people across generations. And so part of what is happening in these state legislatures across the country, and with regard to the effort to push back against teaching of History, 1619 Project Critical Race theory and the like, is a recognition that we have developed in this country a more sophisticated understanding, a more sophisticated framework, a more sophisticated public lexicon with which to understand how slavery, how racism, was not just an interpersonal phenomenon, it was a historic one, it was a structural one, it was a systemic one.
- [14:43]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
I want you to talk more about
- [14:45]
Amy Goodman
your book, how the word is a reckoning with the history of slavery across America. Talk about the journey you took. You were just mentioning where you grew
- [14:58]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
up in Louisiana, the map of the
- [15:01]
Amy Goodman
streets of Louisiana, and why you feel it is so critical not only to look at the south, but your chapter
- [15:11]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
on New York is something that people will be. Many will be shocked by the level
- [15:20]
Amy Goodman
of when people talk about the south and slavery.
- [15:23]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
That New York, of course, had enslaved people.
- [15:28]
Opal Lee
It did.
- [15:29]
Clint Smith
It was really important for me to include a chapter on New York City and a place in the north more broadly, in part because, you know, while the majority of places I visit are in the south, because the south is where slavery was saturated and where it was most intimately tied to the social and economic infrastructure of that society, it most certainly also existed in the North. What a lot of people don't know is that New York City, for an extended period of time was the second largest slave port in the country after Charleston, South Carolina. That in 1860, on the brink of the Civil War, when South Carolina was about to secede from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln, that New York City's mayor, Fernando Wood, proposed that New York City should also secede from the Union alongside the Southern states, because New York's financial, political, and political infrastructure were so deeply entangled and tied to the slavocracy of the South. Also, that the Statue of Liberty was originally conceived by Edouard de Laboulay, a French abolitionist who conceived of the idea of the Statue of Liberty and giving it to the United States as a gift that it was originally conceived as an idea to celebrate the end of the Civil War and to celebrate abolition. And so. But over time, that meaning has been even through the conception of the statue. Right. The original conception of the statue actually had Lady Liberty breaking shackles like A pair of broken shackles on her wrists to symbolize the end of slavery. And over time, it became very clear that that would not have the sort of widestream or wide mainstream support of people across the country, obviously, this having been just not too long after the end of the Civil War. So there was still a lot of fresh wounds. And so they shifted the meaning of the statue to be more about a sort of inclusivity, more about the American experience, the American project, the American promise, the promise of democracy, and sort of obfuscated the original meaning to the point where even the design changed. And so they replaced the shackles with a tablet and the torch and then put the shackles very subtly sort of underneath her robe. And you can see. But the only way you can see them, these broken chains, these broken links, are from a helicopter or from an airplane. And in many ways, I think that that is a microcosm for how we hide the story of slavery across this country. That these chain links are hidden out of sight, out of view of most people, from under the robe of Lady Liberty. And how the story of slavery across this country is very, as we see now, very intentionally trying to be hidden and kept from so many people so that we have a fundamentally inconsistent understanding of the way that slavery shaped our contemporary society today.
- [18:14]
Amy Goodman
Glint, before we end, you are an author, you're a writer, you're a teacher, and you are a poet. Can you share a poem with us?
- [18:24]
Clint Smith
I'd be happy to. And so when you're a poet writing nonfiction, you. That very much animates the way that I approach the text. And so this is part of the. This is an adaptation or an excerpt from the end of one of my chapters that originally began as a poem that I wrote when I was trying to think about some of these issues that I brought up. Growing up, the iconography of the Confederacy was an ever present fixture of my daily life. Every day on the way to school, I passed a statue of pgt Beauregard riding on horseback, his Confederate uniform slung over his shoulder and his military cap pulled far down over his eyes. As a child, I did not know who pgt Beauregard was. I did not know he was the man who ordered the first attack that opened the Civil War. I did not know he was one of the architects who designed the Confederate battle flag. I did not know he led an army predicated on maintaining the institution of slavery. What I knew is that he looked like so many of the other statues that ornamented the edges of this city. These copper garlands of a past that saw truth as something that should be buried underground and silenced by the soil. After the war, the sons and daughters of the Confederacy reshaped the contours of treason into something they could name as honorable. We call it the Lost Cause. And it crept its way into textbooks that attempted to cover up a crime that was still unfolding. They told us that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man, guilty of nothing but fighting for the state and the people that he loved. That the Southern flag was about heritage and remembering those slain fighting to preserve their way of life. But see, the thing about the Lost Cause is that it's only lost if you're not actually looking. The thing about heritage is that it's a word that also means I'm ignoring what we did to you. I was taught the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but I was never taught how the declarations of Confederate secession had the promise of human bondage carved into its stone. I was taught the war was about economics, but I was never taught that in 1860, the 4 million enslaved Black people were worth more than every bank, factory and railroad combined. I was taught that the Civil War was about states rights, but I was never taught how the Fugitive Slave act could care less about a border and spell Georgia and Massachusetts the exact same way. It's easy to look at a flag and call it heritage when you don't see the black bodies buried behind it. It's easy to look at a statue and call it history when you ignore the laws written in its wake. I come from a city abounding with statues of white men on pedestals and black children playing beneath them, where we played trumpets and trombones to drown out the Dixie Song that still whistled in the wind. In New Orleans, There were over 100 schools, roads and buildings named for Confederates and slaveholders. Every day, black children walk into buildings named after people who never wanted them to be there. Every time I would return home, I would drive on streets named for those who would have wanted me in chains. Go straight for two miles on Robert E. Lee. Take a left on Jefferson Davis. Make the first right on Claiborne. Translation? Go straight for two miles on the general who slaughtered hundreds of black soldiers who were trying to surrender. Take a left on the president of the Confederacy who made the torture of black bodies the cornerstone of his new nation. Make the first right on the man who permitted the heads of rebelling slaves to be put on stakes and spread across the city in order to prevent the others from getting any ideas. What name is there for this sort of violence, what do you call it when the road you walk on is named for those who imagined you under a noose? What do you call it when the roof over your head is named after people who would have wanted the bricks to crush you?
- [21:55]
Amy Goodman
Clint Smith, author of the book how the Word Is a Reckoning with a History of Slavery Across America, speaking on Democracy now in 2021, the day after Juneteenth became a federal holiday. Coming up, the pioneering musical artist Rhiannon Giddens. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar, about Omar Ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa sold into slavery in the 1800s.
- [22:25]
Kalief Browder
I've got a babe, but shall I keep him? Twill come the day when I'll be weeping. But how can I love him any day, This little babe upon my breast. You can take my body, you can take my bones, you can take my blood, but not my soul. You can take my body, you can take my bones, you can take my
- [23:04]
Amy Goodman
blood, but not at the purchaser's option by our next guest, Rhiannon Giddens. This is democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and Peace Report.
- [23:16]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
I'm Amy Goodman.
- [23:17]
Amy Goodman
As we continue our Juneteenth special, we turn now to the pioneering musical artist Rhiannon Giddens. She first gained fame as a member of the Grammy Award winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, a black string band which inspired a new generation of black musicians to play the banjo and fiddle. Giddens has gone on to have a celebrated solo career and has even collaborated with Beyonce. Giddens banjo playing can be heard on Texas Hold', Em, a hit single by Beyonce, who became the first black woman to ever top the Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. In 2023, Rhiannon Giddens won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar, about Omar Ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa sold into slavery and forcefully brought to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1807. In a moment, we'll hear Rhiannon Giddens talk about Omar, but first, an excerpt from the song Julie's aria from the opera Omar.
- [24:17]
Kalief Browder
My daddy wore a cap like yours. He got down on his knees and he faced the rising sun and he did it again when the day was done. He wouldn't need this and he wouldn't need that. No matter the lean, no matter the fat. He drove my mama crazy but she loved him anyway. They found each other in the darkness. The way they looked at the world wasn't the same but the way that they looked at each other there was the flame. They Sold my daddy down when I was 10.
- [25:47]
Amy Goodman
That's Julie Zaria from Rhiannon Giddens Pulitzer Prize winning opera Omar, which she wrote with Michael Abels. I spoke to her in October 2023 on the day she received the Pulitzer Prize.
- [26:01]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
Rhiannon, this is just astounding. Can you talk about the life of Omar ibn Said?
- [26:08]
Rhiannon Giddens
I can, yeah. He was a 37 year old Quranic scholar. He'd been studying, you know, for all of his adult life, even when he was a child and he was 37 years old and he was sold into slavery, his compound was overrun and he was sold and he had to go over the Middle Passage and he ended up in Charleston was his first port of call. And he was sold to a man there that he, I think, used him pretty badly, like put him in the fields and treated him very badly. And he didn't, you know, he ran away from him and he ended up in North Carolina and they found him in a jail. They put him in jail because you couldn't just be a random black person walking around. Somebody had to own you or you were, you know, imprisoned. And so he was put into jail and he was found there. And he had written on the walls with the ashes verses of the Koran. And so he was sold to a family in North Carolina where he lived out the rest of his life another 50 years. He lived into his 80s and was never freed. And the reason we know who he is is that he wrote an autobiography in Arabic. So he was pressed upon to write the story of his life, even though he begins it with I cannot write my life because this was 20 years after he had been brought to the United States. And it's just a remarkable document. It's the only, as best as the scholars who've told me know, it's the only autobiography written by an enslaved person while they are enslaved that we have, you know, anywhere in the United States. And it's definitely the only document written in Arabic by an enslaved person. So it's a really special thing that we have it. And I was commissioned by the Spoleto Festivals, the first opera they commissioned to write an opera. And I brought in Michael Abels, who's an incredible composer and film scorer and who knows the orchestra and knows how to write for orchestra. I know how to write for banjo and for voice. So between the two of us, we created the score for Omar and I wrote the libretto. And it was a really intense experience, you know, but it's just so amazing that Omar's story has been is being lifted by this opera, being lifted by the existence of this work, and more and more people are knowing about him. Because the whole point for me was to complicate the. Again, the complication, to complicate the American narrative. Like, who gets to say that they represent the American story? You know, why is the Mayflowers, you know, somebody who came on the Mayflower. Why is that held up as representational when Omar's is just as representational? It's just not, asyou know, it's not as pleasant. It's very challenging. And also that there were so many Muslims that were brought over to the United States, and they have, you know, a massive impact on the culture and in some places, language, you know, if you go to the Georgia Sea Islands, where you can trace some of the words in Gullah to Arabic. So it's just. It was just an opportunity to really just kind of blow things wide open and go, well, this is. This is another huge part of the story that hasn't been told. And going through the life of Omar, you can really represent that in a way that's just really remarkable, because he was remarkable. You know, he was remarkable that he was able to hold onto his faith. He quoted the Quran till he died, you know, and he was by himself. He wasn't like, you know, surrounded by people that, you know, like he was when he was back home. And he has to carry the whole thing on his own. You know, he has to remember the verses. He has to remember the language. He has to do it all, you know, in isolation. And that's just, you know, it's a thing. And he did it. And now that he left something so that we can, you know, look at his words and go, wow, what a remarkable life.
- [30:09]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
Rhiannon, you talk about Omar living out his years in North Carolina. You were born in North Carolina in Greensboro. Can you talk about your own indigenous and African American roots and how you first picked up the banjo, how you got involved with music, the trajectory of your life, and all of the musical forms that you have now excelled in and expressed yourself in?
- [30:38]
Rhiannon Giddens
Wow, okay. How long do you have? Okay, I'll give you the capsule version. Yeah. I'm from North Carolina, from a mixed family, mixed black and white. And I know indigenous, you know, back there is kind of a typical Southern story of black, white, and red mixed in sort of indiscriminate ways. And I don't claim a tribal affiliation. I like to say I'm, like, native adjacent. You know, I know I've got cousins who identify as native. But I myself use that story to try to raise awareness and to highlight and to ally myself with the native story, the indigenous story, because so many indigenous people feel invisible because, you know, a lot of mainstream culture just assumes that that was passed and there's not even sure there's no Indians around, you know, and I use the word Indian because a lot of people, especially North Carolina, consider themselves as Indian, Indian country, Indian culture. So, you know, it's complicated. And not any group is monolithic, including indigenous people. And then, you know, obviously there's black and white, and that's been the mainmy main sort of affiliation. And I didn't know anything about Omar's story, which made me so mad because I was born and raised in North Carolina. But anyway, that's, you know, that's another thing. So I just grew up, you know, as a southerner and I grew up with my grandparents first and living out in the country and listening to Hee Haw and listening to blues and jazz records and just whatever they were listening to. And you know, over the years, I got a lot of different music from different people. My dad, my sister, my mom, my grandparents, and just sort of took it all in and went to Oberlin, you know, graduated with a bachelor's in music, you know, loved opera.
- [32:29]
Kalief Browder
I loved it.
- [32:30]
Rhiannon Giddens
I love, I still love it, you know, soprano, I did a bunch of operas. It was Juliet, it was all of these things. And then came back home and I was like, what am I doing? You know, like what, what am I doing in opera that like a million other sopranos can't do as good or better than me? Like, what am I bringing? I remember thinking this, you know, and while I was trying to figure that out, I started contra dancing, like square dancing, but in long lines. It's a community dance, you know, and. And that's when I fell in love with the banjo because there were always live bands and a lot of old time bands. And then I found out the history of the banjo and then I was kind of record scratch time, you know, that was. Wasn't just because I love the banjo, but I felt the injustice of having been raised in North Carolina, surrounded by banjo music, not knowing the true history of the banjo, like wanting to learn the banjo and feeling like I had to ask permission, you know, and then finding out that the banjo itself is a black instrument and that the tradition itself is a creole tradition, that's a cross cultural collaborative tradition, and that I didn't have to ask any permission to play this music because it was My music, you know, and I just got really upset, you know, I just got mad. I was just like, why haven't I been told this? You know, why don't I know this? And then immediately falling on the heels of that question was, and in whose best interest is it that I don't know this thing? And so that just kind of set me off on my path of, you know, trying to uncover, to discover, to shine a light, you know, and just, I've just kind of gone where, where I've been led, really, because I just, I love, I love all the stories, the stories that we don't hear, you know, in our school system. The stories that aren't deemed interesting enough or that deviate from the narrative of this is white and this is black and brown doesn't exist and, you know, let's keep everything separated so that they don't realize that we're snookering them all.
- [34:25]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
So talk about being a part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. And then I want to ask you about our native daughters. Rhiannon, of course.
- [34:34]
Rhiannon Giddens
Yeah. The Carolina Taco Drops is a, you know, black string band that was formed around 2006. And kind of the center of it was learning from Joe Thompson, who was an 86 year old African American fiddler from Mebbe, North Carolina. That was one of the last, like, proponents of the old string band position. Not the only black fiddler, you know, left in the country, but one of the last of that kind of old time, you know, black string band tradition, rural tradition, where it had been passed down as an oral tradition from the time of slavery. And so, you know, we wanted to take that out into the world and educate about that. So myself, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson were the original members of the Chocolate Drops. Over the years there would be different really super talented black instrumentalists and singers who have come into the group and gone on to do great things, like Leila McCalla, hubby Jenkins. The first trio was myself, Dom and Justin. And we were the ones who worked with Joe Thompson for some years.
- [35:38]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
And then Our Native Daughters and Songs of Our Natives Daughters, which highlight the struggle, the resistance, the hope of black women resonating back to the 17th, the 18th and 19th century. Talk about your work there.
- [35:56]
Rhiannon Giddens
Yeah, I was in the Smithsonian, the Museum for African American Culture, History and Culture at Smithsonian in D.C. and I was just really struck with some of the historical exhibits. And I was just thinking that, God, we need to be making music from these really hard things. And it just kind of turned into this project was. Was they Asked me to record something for them. And I said, I'm just thinking, okay, here's the project. I want to do something with these historical things in the Smithsonian. And then it just kind of like, as I was thinking about who to do it with, you know, women, the story of women, especially black women, really is what has driven me a lot in my solo work. You know, my earliest songwriting dealt with women during the. During the slavery times. And coming from slave narrative, enslaved people's narratives, and different paraphernalia around slavery, but always centering women because I feel. I felt like that's not the stories we get. You know, even if we get enslaved stories, we don't always get other than Harriet Tubman. That's kind of. That's kind of it. And so the opportunity to bring three other black women, you know, together with myself, and then I wanted every. I wanted the banjo to be central because it's also been so maligned and so misunderstood, and it's so central to American culture, you know, that I wanted to be other banjo playing black women. So I keep telling people, like, there's more than just me. There's a lot of us, actually, at this point, you know.
- [37:32]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
Rhiannon, can you tell us your favorite song from our native daughters?
- [37:39]
Rhiannon Giddens
Oh, gosh. You know, I love them all, but I think Moon Meets sun was one of the first ones that we wrote, and it was one that three of us wrote together. Layla wasn't there that day. It was me and Ali and Amethyst, and it really has all three of us in it, and that was just a magic moment. We just kind of went, okay, this is a thing. This is so cool. We don't have to explain ourselves to each other. We don't have to, like, you know, we just, like. There was just so much that we didn't have to do because we all were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, and it was just. It kind of made for a really wonderful communal energy that surrounded this song. So that's definitely one of my favorites.
- [38:34]
Kalief Browder
When the day is the moon meets the sun we'll be dancing.
- [38:52]
Amy Goodman
The pioneering musical artist Rhiannon Giddens. We spoke in October 2023, the day she received the Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar. When we come back, we'll talk about her song Another Wasted Life, and how she worked on the song's video with 22 people who were wrongly incarcerated.
- [39:26]
Kalief Browder
This ain't Texas ain't no holding down down, down so pocket Lexus throw your
- [39:38]
Amy Goodman
keys up Texas Hold' Em by Beyonce, featuring the banjo playing of our guest, Rhiannon Giddens. This is democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We're continuing this Juneteenth special with the musician Rhiannon Giddens. In October, she marked International Wrongful Conviction Day by releasing a video for her so Wasted Life. The song was inspired by Kalief Browder, a Bronx resident who died by suicide in 2015 at the age of 22 after being detained at Rikers island jail for nearly three years. After being falsely accused at the age of 16 of stealing a backpack, he was held in solitary confinement for two years and was repeatedly assaulted by guards and other prisoners. In the video for Another Wasted Life, Rhiannon Giddens features 22 people who were wrongly incarcerated. Together, the men collectively served more than 500 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Rhiannon Giddens made the video in partnership with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. This is an excerpt he's given.
- [41:00]
Kalief Browder
Solitary time and institutional Capri. It's a torture of the soul the narrow confines of control Thrown down the stinking hole with no hope of release. It's just another wasted life
- [41:43]
Rhiannon Giddens
it's just
- [41:44]
Kalief Browder
another wasted life it's just another wasted life
- [41:56]
Amy Goodman
that was another wasted Life by our guest Rhiannon Giddens. The song is featured on her album, you're the One. I asked Rhiannon Giddens to talk about
- [42:06]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
the album and that song.
- [42:08]
Rhiannon Giddens
Well, it's. It's an interesting thing. You know, I've a lot of my work, most of my work, you know, especially since going solo. I mean, obviously, the Carolina Chocolate Drops had a mission, you know, of sort of telling the world about black string band music, of spreading our mentor Joe Thompson's family music around and just trying to educate about the true history of the banjo. And then when I went solo, I was able to really go to things that I had been wanting to do, you know, during the band years, but it wasn't quite the right time, really focusing on women's voices, focusing on stories from the time of slavery. And really the common sort of denominator's always been sort of this sense of mission, whether it's in the band or solo. But the thing is that mission is weighty, you know, And I just kind of had gotten to a point where I was like, I kind of feel like if I keep going with, you know, on this trajectory, I'm gonna burn out, and then I'm not gonna behave any good. To anybody. So it's time to kind of take a turn for a second and explore other parts of my artistry. And that's what yout're the One really comes out of. It's songs that I've written over the course of like 14 years that were just, you know, fun songs, songs that were inspired by some of my idols, like Dolly Parton and Aretha Franklin, a lot of like, you know, love songs, a lot of, you know, you dog, get out of My house songs, you know, kind of those sorts of things. But I can't, I really can't leave the Mission behind, even for this record. So I also really wanted to include another Wasted Life, which I had written, you know, after reading about Kalief Browder some years ago and had sort of put into a book and kind of went, okay, like, when is the right time? I'll know what to do with the song. And then when this album was sort of coalescing and coming together, I was like, this is it. Because, you know, it's a different approach. Like what I have done before, like say something with something like Freedom highway, which is my, I guess, civil rights record. Every song there is really kind of infused with thinking about the history of the United States, thinking about, you know, the legacy of slavery, thinking about civil rights and all of that. And it's a very kind of cohesive album. But it's all very. Every single song kind of has that thought behind it. Whereas with this album, all the songs, except for one, are fun, you know, even the sad love songs are still fun songs. And this kind of sticks out as the Mission song. And it's a different approach because this then gets all the focus, you know, in terms of the emotional weight and, you know, what it does. So I'm really excited that I've had the opportunity to put it out there surrounded by, you know, something different, so that it really kind of has an opportunity to jump out at the listener.
- [44:58]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
I want to go to Kalief Browder in his own words. This is Kalief speaking to the HuffPost Live's Mark Lamont Hill. Back a decade ago in 2013, Kalief had spent, as we said earlier, three years at Rikers in New York without charge. He was a 16 year old high
- [45:19]
Amy Goodman
school sophomore when he was first detained on suspicion of stealing a backpack. He said while he was in solitary records, the guards often refused to give him his meals.
- [45:31]
Kalief Browder
If you say anything that could tick them off in any type of way, some of them, which is a lot of them, what they do is they starve you, they won't feed you. And it's already hard in there because if you get the three trays that you get every day, you're still hungry because I guess that's part of the punishment. So if they starve you one tray, that could really make an impact on you.
- [45:51]
Clint Smith
How much were you starved?
- [45:53]
Kalief Browder
I was starved a lot. I can't even count.
- [45:57]
Amy Goodman
Kalief Browder went on to say he
- [46:00]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
was once starved four times in a row. No breakfast, lunch, dinner, or breakfast again. After enduring nearly 800 days in solitary confinement and abuses, Browder was only released when the case was dismissed. He would go on to college, but he died by suicide on June 6, 2015 at his home in the Bronx.
- [46:21]
Amy Goodman
He was 22 years old. Rhiannon Giddens, can you talk about how
- [46:26]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
you discovered Kalief's story and then talk about the other men who are included in this video? I mean, this is just a mind blowing, paradigm shattering video that will affect anyone who sees it.
- [46:44]
Rhiannon Giddens
Well, I am not sure, to be honest with you. It must have been a news story, you know, a news item or something like that where I just read the whole thing. You know, it was obviously after he committed suicide, because that's the thing that kind of got me, you know, it was not only how he was treated, you know, an innocent teenager put through the system in such a brutal way, but it's the fact that he, you know, the transition back into the world, I mean, who knows what was going through his mind, but obviously, like, it changed him, you know, And I just felt like his life was stolen from him. Not only the hours that he had to spend inside enduring what he had to endure, but also the hours that he's not gonna. He never got to live, you know, And I feel like that, that, that just kind of went all over me and I just sat down and wrote it. So when the opportunity to do youo're the One and have it to be sort of a big album, you know, that non such was, you know, my label was putting a lot of resources behind the record. So to be able to put another wasted life on there. I knew very early on that I wanted to do a video. You know, videos these days are really kind of. Unless you're like a huge, huge mega star, they're almost not worth the money that you put into because, like, how do you get them out? And people don't even see them on. On social media half the time. And so it's really hard to justify making a video. A lot of times these days. But I knew that that's what I wanted to make a video for, was another wasted life. And I also knew after we started working with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, that I wanted to center the men who had been exonerated. I wanted to center these guys, you know, because we can't center the people who are still in prison because we can't reach them. So I knew that I wanted to be and just enough in to make the connection. I knew that right away. And so when we reached out to the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and said, this is kind of what we want to do, and they were just really great and sent that around to some of the guys that they have freed because they've been working so hard to free innocent men who are in prison. And 22 guys reached back out and said, yes, we'd like to be a part of this. And we took, you know, a day and we filmed the video, and it was just, like, it was such an experience to be there and talk to these guys. And, like, all of them were like, we are here for those who are still in. We are here for those guys who are still in cages, thinking that nobody cares about them. And so many of them were like, man, we're just so grateful that people care. We're just so grateful that you're doing this. And I just kind of, like, I was sitting there going, it's, like, literally the least I can do. Like, literally. You know what I mean? It's just like, it's such a skewed thing that there's clearly not. They don't feel like people care, because I'm sure in their experience, a lot of people don't, you know, and the fact that there are these Innocence Projects full of people who do care is wonderful, and that I'm doing My Little Tiny Might, you know, to raise awareness. But it's like, that was the thing that hit me the most, is, like, just the sense of hopelessness that they would talk about being in prison thinking, like, nobody cares that I'm in here, and through no fault of my own, you know, so they were just incredibly generous with their time.
- [50:19]
Clint Smith
And.
- [50:20]
Rhiannon Giddens
And I'm just very proud of that video and everybody who volunteered on it, from the directors and the people who donated money so that it could happen. It was a rule. Everybody just really came together to make that happen. And if nothing else happened with this record and that was it, I would be incredibly proud of that.
- [50:38]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
Well, I mean, your song, I think, is also so powerful, as you say, because it was inspired by Kalief. And I hate to do this to
- [50:46]
Amy Goodman
you, but much worse.
- [50:47]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
I hate the idea that this happened, but I wanted to go to one more clip, maybe the world's saddest clip. Again, this is that decade ago interview with Mark Lamont Hill. Kalief was talking about his suicide attempts at Rikers and his efforts to get psychiatric help.
- [51:08]
Kalief Browder
I would say I committed suicide about five or six times.
- [51:12]
Rhiannon Giddens
Okay, you attempted suicide five to six times?
- [51:14]
Clint Smith
Yes. All while still in prison?
- [51:16]
Kalief Browder
Yes, while. And I tried to resort to telling the correction officers that I wanted to see a psychiatrist or a counselor, something. I was telling her I need mental health because I wasn't feeling right. All the stress from my case, everything was just getting to me and I just couldn't take it. I just needed somebody to talk to. I needed to just let. I just needed to be. I just needed to talk and be stress free. But the correction officers, they didn't want to hear me out. Nobody wanted to let. Listen.
- [51:47]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
That's Kalief before he ultimately did take his own life. Of course, again, he was never convicted and he was released. Went to college, but couldn't survive beyond that. Rhiannon, as you listen to Khalif and have your own two kids, as you try to give them hope in the world, your thoughts and how you transform these stories into music,
- [52:16]
Rhiannon Giddens
man, it's tough, you know, I mean, to be first off, you know, to be perfectly frank, my children are white presenting. So I have a son, he's 10. And I know that he's not going to go through a lot of the things that black men go through in America. So I don't even pretend to know, you know what I mean, to even think my sister, like, I've been through so much kind of watching my sister, you know. Cause her son is black and he's my nephew and he's amazing. But he like just seeing her go through the stress and, you know, he's been pulled over and there's been things that have happened and like her utter terrifying, just emotion of like, well, you know, what if something happens to him? What if, you know, all of these things during the protest after George Floyd's murder. And I can live vicariously through her and feel that terror, but I know that I don't have that same terror because of the way he presents, you know, and it's like other things may happen to him and that's a normal terror that parents have. But it's hard. It's like I can imagine it because, you know, of being with my sister but it's just. It's such a. It's such a horrible thing to think that the system that he was caught up in is so uncaring and is so actually actively against these young men, you know, that there is no. Even when people are exonerated. This is what kills me, is that the system is so efficient that even when people are exonerated, they have been proven innocent. Like, there was one story about a guy who was literally in prison. He was in jail already. When he was. They said that he had murdered somebody else. Like, he was already in the system, and he still got bullied into a plea or something and ended up in prison. And it took, like, decades to get him out, you know, and you just kind of go, these prisons are not there for rehabilitation. They're not there for correction, whatever that means. They are there to make money, and they're there to keep these young men inside or to keep them in the system, because, like, when they go inside, when they come out, they just. Re. A lot of times they reoffend because they have been affected so much by being in prison. And it's like, that's obviously a system that has been. That is there because that is. It works. You know, like, people say, oh, the prison system's broken. I was like, actually, no, it's not broken. That's like. That's the way it's meant to work. And so, like, you hear him talking about, like, I was feeling these things, and I asked for help, and he's not getting help inside, and you're just like, yeah, they don't want to help him.
- [55:00]
Kalief Browder
You know what I mean?
- [55:01]
Rhiannon Giddens
And it's just like, I'm sure that there are people, good people in there somewhere. I don't know where they are. I don't even know if they can be. I don't even know if the system allows caring or humanity. You know, I think it probably weeds it out. You know, I know everybody's got their own story, but it's just. It's hard to hear that, because you just know that that's being repeated at countless prisons and correctional facilities all over this country. You know that there are people inside and whether they did something or not, because at this point, I'm like, you know, there's a lot. It's very complicated because if you're driven to crime, like, I want to look at what's happening that is surrounding that action. You know, it's. We tend to just punish people without looking at the situation that they come out of. And it's like, well, how has the system contributed to that? How has our culture contributed to that? But anyway, but even if you take somebody who has been proven innocent, and it's just like, to know that there are people being treated like that in our institutions, you know, this is why I wrote the song. It's why I've put it out there. And the other thing is, before we move on about the story is, you know, I wrote that as kind of an emotional response of like, you know, feeling like, yeah, that was another wasted life. Like, here's, you know, whatever genius he had, whatever beautiful things he could have done, like, we're all robbed of them, you know, because of what happened. And when I've been performing this live, I brought that nephew, that same. My sister's son, who's a rapper, and I asked him, because I had brought him on tour, and I asked him to listen to the song and create some bars, you know, to rap in the middle of the song. And he came up with this beautiful thing because I. Because I wanted. He's. He's like, kind of staring down the barrel of a gun, you know, by being a young black man in America, like, so I wanted his voice in this song. It's important for me that it's not just about, like, what am I saying? But I want to be either a catalyst or a framer or, you know, a platform for somebody else, you know, and so I wanted him to be able to say whatever he wanted to say. And he ends his words with, you know, as long as we say their names, it's not a wasted life. And so when we perform it live, it goes back and forth, and I kind of feel like I'm like the mother. And he's like, you know what I mean? It's like we add some layers to the song because it is like people are going through these things, and
- [57:41]
Kalief Browder
it
- [57:41]
Rhiannon Giddens
just was an important perspective to kind of mix with mine. So we were able to do that. We were able to perform it like that on the Daily show last night. So that performance is up online. And I think it's a really powerful one because of the generations, too, you know, so I'm the older generation, he's the younger generation. And it really kind of complicates the narrative and adds layers to it. And that's important to me because, like. Like, all narratives are complicated. You know, we tend to like to slim em down, but I like to add to that and to add to the voices that are coming out. So I just. I wanted to mention that.
- [58:15]
Interviewer (Amy Goodman or Host)
Rhiannon, I want to just play a clip from the Daily show of you and your nephew.
- [58:23]
Kalief Browder
It's just another wasted life. Notice to say your name.
- [58:27]
Rhiannon Giddens
Then that's the wasted life. That is no wasted life.
- [58:29]
Joe Biden
Hey,
- [58:32]
Kalief Browder
as long as we say their
- [58:33]
Rhiannon Giddens
name, that's no wasted life. That is no wasted life.
- [58:36]
Kalief Browder
It's just another wasted life.
- [58:39]
Amy Goodman
That was Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning musician. Her new album is titled you're the One. We'll link to the video for her song another wasted life@democracynow.org and that does it for today's special Juneteenth broadcast. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.