Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-06-19 Friday

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Juneteenth Special: Historian Clint Smith on Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America; Rhiannon Giddens on Pulitzer-Winning Opera “Omar” About Enslaved Muslim Scholar Omar ibn Said; “Another Wasted Life”: Rhiannon Giddens on How Death of Kalief Browder Inspired Her Song

From New York, this is Democracy Now. 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. 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. We'll speak to Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Past, A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Then to the pioneering musical artist Rianne Giddens, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar about Omar Ibn Saeed, a Muslim scholar in Africa who was sold into slavery in the 1800s.

It's just so amazing that Omar's story 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. Rianan Giddens was a founding member of the Grammy-winning blackstring band that Carolina chocolate drops. Her banjo playing can also be heard on Beyonce's hit single, Texas Hold'em. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.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. The day after Biden signed the legislation, I spoke to the writer and poet Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Past, 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. 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 Prev Bechrist, the late Al Edwards Sr. is the state legislator, a black state legislator who made possible and advocated for the legislation that turned Juneteenth into a 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 3. 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. after General Robert 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 end in 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 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 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. 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?

Right. So the Emancipation Proclamation is often a widely misunderstood document. So it did not sort of wholesale free the enslaved people through. 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, inflate 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 and 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 and 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 generally had surrendered at Appomatics 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. During the ceremony, making Juneteenth the federal holiday, President Biden got down on his knee to greet Opel Lee, the 94-year-old activist known as the grandmother of Juneteenth. This is Biden speaking about Lee. As a child growing up in Texas, she and her family would celebrate Juneteenth.

In Juneteenth, 1939, when she was 12 years old, a white mob torched her family home. But such hate never stopped her anymore than to stop 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. And this is Opel Lee speaking at Harvard School of Public Health. I don't want people to think June Teeth 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. And that is Opel Lee, considered the grandmother of Juneteenth. And Clint, one of the things you do in your book is you introduce us to grassroots activists. This doesn't come from the top. This comes from years of organizing, as you point out, in Galveston itself and with people like, not that there's anyone like Opel Lee. 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 them down NOLA in New Orleans, 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 when I think about someone like Ms. Opelie, part of what I think about is our proximity to this period of history, right? Slavery existed for 250 years in this country and is 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 Flintstone, 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, was the daughter of an enslaved person, was who opened this museum of the Smithsonian. in 2016. And so there's clearly, for so many people, there are people who are alive today, who are raised by, who knew, who were in community with, who love, keep 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 it was so many activists and grassroots public historians and organizers across this country recognized is that if we don't fully understand an 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 shaped 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 that 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, more wholly and honestly about the legacy of slavery have been doing. During an interview on CNN, Democratic Congress member Alexander Casio-Cortez called out the 14 Republican Congress members, all white men, who voted against making Juneteenth the federal holiday. This is pretty consistent with, I think, the Republican base. And whether it's trying to fight against teaching basic history around racism and the role of racism in U.S. 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. 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 the for the People Act, the voting rights act. Absolutely. I think very clearly the critical race theory, the actual race theory, the action. 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. I want you to talk more about your book, how the word is passed, a reckoning with the history of slavery across America. Can you talk about the journey you took? You were just mentioning where you grew up in Louisiana, the map of the streets of Louisiana. and why you feel it is so critical, not only to look at the South, but your chapter on New York is something that people will be, many will be, shocked by the level of when people talk about

the South in slavery, that New York, of course, had enslaved people. It did. 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 exists 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 slaveocracy of the South. Also that the Statue of Liberty was originally conceived by Eduardo de la Boulet, a French abolitionist who were 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 wrist to symbolize the end of slavery. And over time, it became very clear that that would not have the sort of widespread 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 were still a lot of fresh wounds. And so they shifted the meaning of the statute to be more about 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 change. And so they replaced the shackles with a tablimate. and the torch, and then put the shackles very subtly sort of underneath her robe. And you can, 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. 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. Glenn, 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? I'd be happy to. And so when you're a poet writing nonfiction, you're a poet, 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 world 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 state's rights, but I was never taught how the fugitive slave act could care less about a border and spelled 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 are 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 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 of 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? Clint Smith, author of the book, How the Word is Past, 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, Rianan 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. I've got a babe, but shall I keep him?

At the day when I'll dream of him and eat this little babe. You can take my body, you can take my body, my soul, you can take my soul. You can take my soul. At the purchasers option by our next guest, Riannon Giddens. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. As we continue our Juneteenth special, We turn now to the pioneering musical artist Rianan 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 Holden, a hit single by Beyonce, who became the first black woman to ever top. the Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. In 2023, Rian 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 Rianne and Giddens talk about Omar, but first an excerpt from the song Julie's Aria from the opera Omar. My daddy wore a cat 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 eat this

And he would need no matter the fact He drove my mom Loved him and he That's Julie's Aria from Riannon 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. Rianan, this is just astounding. Can you talk about the life of Omar Ibn Said? 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 protocol. 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 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 versus of the Quran. And so he was sold to 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 have told me, no, 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 Spiletto Festival, the first opera they commissioned to write an opera. And I brought in Michael Ables,

who's an incredible composer and film scorer, and who 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, the, um, Again, the complication, to complicate the American narrative, like, who gets to say that they represent the American story, you know?

Why is, why is the Mayflowers, you know, somebody who came on the Mayflower? Why is that held up as representational? When Omar is just as representational, it's just not as, you 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 an opportunity to really just kind of blow things wide open and go, well, 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 on to his faith. He quoted the Quran until 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 he left something so that we can, you know, look at his words and go, wow, what a remarkable life. Brian and 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. 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 past, 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 it's, 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 my main sort of affiliation. And I didn't know anything about Omar's story, which made me so mad because I've 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 at first and living out in the country and listening to he-ha and listening to Hewaw and listening to whatever they were listening to.

And, you know, over the years, I've 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 bachelors in music. You know, it was loved opera. I loved it. I love it. I still love it. you know, a soprano. I did a bunch of operas. It was Juliet. It was all of these things. And then I came back home and I was like, what am I doing? You know, like what am I doing

an 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 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 hip. history of the banjo and then I was kind of record scratch time, you know, that was it. I, it 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 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. So talk about being a part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. And then I want to ask you about our native daughters, Rian. Of course. 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 Meba, 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 it was 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 Lila McAlla,

Hovey Jenkins. The first trio was myself, Dom, and Justin, and we were the ones who worked with Joe Thompson for some years. 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. 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. I, you know, was, was, uh, they asked me to, 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, in the Smithsonian. And then it just kind of like, as I was thinking about who to do it with, you know, women, the, the story of women, especially black women, really is, is what has driven me a lot in my solo work, you know, my earliest songwriting dealt with women during, during the slavery times and coming from enslaved

people's narratives and different paraphernalia around slavery, but always centering women because I feel like that's not the stories we get. Even if we get enslaved stories, we don't always get other than Harriet Tubman. That's kind of it. And so the

opportunity to bring three other black women, you know, together with myself. And then 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 it 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. Riannan, can you tell us your favorite song from our native daughters? Oh, gosh. You know, I love them all. But, like, 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 Allie and Amethyst.

And it really has all three of us in it. And that's just, that was just a magic moment. We just kind of went, okay, this is a thing. Like, 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, 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. The day is done. The moon meets the sun will be dancing. The pioneering musical artist Riannon Giddens. We spoke in October, 2023, the day she received the Pulitzer Prize for her honor. 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. Texas Hold'em by Beyonce featuring the banjo playing of our guest, Riannon Giddens.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We're continuing this Juneteenth special with the musician Riannon Giddens. In October, she marked International Wrongful Conviction Day by releasing a video for her song Another Wasted Life. The song was inspired by Khalif 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, Riannon 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. Riannon Giddens made the video in partnership with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. This is an excerpt. Another Wasted Life by our guest, Riannon Giddens. The song is featured on her album, You're the One. I asked Rianne and Giddens to talk about the album and that song. Well, 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, Carolina Taco 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 has 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 going to burn out and then I'm not going to 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 you'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 Dali Parton and Rita 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 Kleefe Browder some years ago and had sort of put into a book and kind of went, okay, like, when it's 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 is 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 was, 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, to jump out at the listener. I want to go to Khalif Browder, in his own words. This is Khalif speaking to the Huff Post Lives Mark Lamont Hill back a decade ago in 2013.

Khalif had spent, as we said earlier, three years at Rikers in New York without charge. He was a 16-year-old high school sophomore when he was first attained on suspicion of stealing a backpack. He said while he was in solitary at Rikers, the guards often refused to give him his meals. 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 do is, they starve you. They won't feed you. And it's already hard in there because if you get the three trades that you get every day, you're still hungry because I guess that's part of the punishment. So if they starve in one trade, that could really make an impact on you. How much were you starved? I will starve a lot. I can't even count. Kaleef Browder went on to say he was once starved four times in a row,

no breakfast, lunch, dinner, or breakfast again after enduring nearly 800 days in solid, 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. He was 22 years old. Riannon Giddens, can you talk about how you discovered Caliph's story and then talk about the other men who were included in this video? I mean, this is just a mind-blowing, paradigm-shattering video that will affect anyone who sees it. Well, I'm 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, I 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. him in such a brutal way, but it's the fact that he, you know, the transition back into the war. 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 going to, he never got to live, you know? and I feel like that that just kind of went all over me and I just sat down and wrote it.

So when the opportunity to do you're the one and have it to be sort of a big album, you know, that none such was, you know, my label was putting a lot of resources behind the record. So it would 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 megastrored, star, it's, 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 waste of 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 decentered in this 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 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 um and we took you know a day and we filmed the video and it was just like it was such an experience um to be there and talk to these guys and like all of them were like we're 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 it 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, that'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 care, you know. And the fact that there are these innocents, projects of full of people who do care is wonderful and that I'm doing my little tiny mite, 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 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. Well, I mean, your song, I think, is also so powerful, as you say, because it was inspired by Khalif. And I hate to do this to you, but much worse, I hate the idea that this happened.

But I wanted to go to one more clip. Maybe it's the world's saddest clip. Again, this is that decade ago interview with Mark Lamont Hill. Khalif was talking about his suicide attempts at Rikers and his efforts to get psychiatric help. I would say I committed suicide about five to six times. Okay, you attended suicide five to six times? Yes.

All while still in prison? Yes. Wow. And I tried to resort to telling the correction officers that I wanted to see a psychiatrist or counsel or something, I was telling I need mental help 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 need to just let, let, 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 listen. That's Khalif, before he ultimately did take his own life. Of course, again, he was. was never convicted. And he was released, went to college, but couldn't survive beyond that. Rian, and 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. 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, because her son is black and he's my nephew and he's amazing. But he, like, just seeing her go through the stress and he's, you know, he's been pulled over and there's been things that have happened and, like, her utter terrifying just emotion of, like, what, you know, what if something

happens to him? What if, you know, all of these things, stuff when, during the protest, after George Floyd's murder. And I can, 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, 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 and 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 is broken. I was like, actually, no, it's not broken. That's like, that's the way it's meant to work. And so 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. You know what I mean? 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

it's very complicated because if you're, if you're driven to crime, like, I want to look at what's happening that, that, you know, that is surrounding that action, you know, it's, we, we tend to just punish people without looking at the situation that they come out of. And it's like, well, how is, how is the system contributed to that? How is our culture contributed? to that. But anyway, but even if you take somebody who's been proven innocent and it's just like to know that there are our people being treated like that in our institutions, you know, this is why I wrote the song, it's Rye, 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, were 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 wanted he's like kind of staring down the barrel of a gun 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 waste of 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 it's, it 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. 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 all narratives are complicated. We tend to like to slum them down. But I like to add to that and to add to the voices that are coming out. So I just wanted to mention that. Rian and I want to just play a clip from the day.

show of you and your nephew. That was Rianne 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 at Democracy Now.org. And that does it for today's special Juneteenth broadcast. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.