Historically High - Juneteenth

Episode Date: June 19, 2022

Join us as we explore Juneteenth and what it commemorates. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I gotta find this Ben Franklin thing. It is so funny. Do you, um, do you ever think about how fucking, like, weird, like tornadoes are?

Constantly. I was watching this video and it was like, like, actual footage. I don't know if it was like storm chaser footage or anything like that, but I was just thinking,

like, people live in parts of the country where natural disasters, like literally occur on the regular. You're, you're about to start speak in my language here, pal. Or even around, like, I understand, like, the appeal of living in, like, Florida or the Gulf of Mexico.

But when there's literally a fucking, like, hurricane, every... There's... When you have a fucking season dedicated to a natural disaster. Yeah. And then with fucking tornadoes, I don't think there even is a season. Isn't there just... I mean, I'm sure there's a time when tornadoes are more prevalent, like, when weather patterns are a certain way, but can you just imagine that? Like, you are one of like the frontiers people, and you're just moving into, like, Kansas or Nebraska.

That's where Tornado Alley is, right? I know it's Kansas. Yeah, and, like, Tennessee, basically, the Midwest, Kansas. So, you're, you know, you're making your way across the plains, and you come upon, like, a settlement in Kansas, and they're like, is this a good spot to stop? And they're like, it's excellent. There's land that you can go ahead and farm, and, you know, it's a bit. beautiful country, there are

the death winds. They're like, the what? Like, yeah, just like every so often at random, this, like, wind will come out of the sky. The cyclone drops from the sky. It just, yeah, and it just will pick up and kill everything in its path.

Okay, well, like, how do you, like, get away from them? Oh, well, you just have to try to hope they don't land close enough to you, and then you can maybe, like, run away. Every house has a bathtub in it. If you see the dead, wind coming. You jump in the bathtub. We've found that digging holes into the ground and going into those holes has been pretty successful against the death winds.

Does your house have something called a tornado shelter? No, but then, but we still have. I'm sure there aren't, you know, areas within tornado alley. Well, shit, there might be like really expensive communities within that area. But why, why do people live there? I don't know what there are expensive areas I understand that like the population But there's so much more country Like there's a place in the interior of the country

That they could still move They're like hey why don't we just stay out of that area Where there's like tornadoes Let's go to Wyoming where there's just nothing Yeah It's the same thing you can do the exact same things In Wyoming you can do in Kansas Do you think other countries

Have like Areas within their country that they know As like the natural disaster spots Like does France have like a tornado alley like do tornadoes even happen in france i don't it seems like everything's too close over there like because they because they literally don't you know we only get them in that small area oh i it's not probably not that small of an area but we get them in just that area of the country we don't get like but isn't a tornado where like warm air and cold air meets so like probably in between the

appalachian mountains and the rocky mountains i don't know that yeah you could be 100% right i I wouldn't be able to argue with you on that. I know in, like, Japan, there's, like, bad mudslide areas. Yeah. Where every time there's bad rain, everybody just hunkers down and prays to God, they don't die. I guess we don't get monsoons. No. We don't have monsoons season like they do, like, around the Indian Ocean and all that stuff.

And, like, Mexico, you get El Nino and stuff like that. Is that a thing still? Oh, yeah. El Nino's, it's like every six years or something like that, the baby? And the boy? The boy? The baby boy. The baby boy.

That's what Nino is, the baby boy. Is it? Yeah. Okay. So that thing I was telling you about with Ben Franklin, he wrote something called advice to a young man on the choice of a mistress. And he lists just a bunch of different stuff. Number one, it says,

I know of no medicine fit to diminish the violent natural inclinations you mentioned. And if I did, I think I should not communicate to you. marriage is the proper remedy. It is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state which you're most likely to find solid happiness. Your reach isn't against entering into it at present appear to me, not well-founded. The circumstantial advantages you have in the view by postponing it are not only uncertain, but their comparison.

And he goes on, and basically he says that you should choose an older lady. advice that in all your armors you should prefer older women to younger women you call this a paradox and demand my reasons they're these because they have more knowledge of the world and their minds are better stored with observations because women

cease to be handsome they study to be good and maintain their influence over men so when they stop being pretty they start making themselves useful in other ways is that what that's saying That's what it sounds like Big Ben's going for. I'm thinking, do you think handsome is a way they described women often back then? A handsome woman is the most backhanded thing ever.

And then what do you do when she ceases to even be handsome? So she went from pretty to handsome. No, she's not even handsome anymore. Because there is no hazard of children which are regularly produced may attend with much inconvenience. So bang an older lady. because you can't have kids anymore. I mean, that's... He's got a point.

Did he write this, like, under a, like, pseudonym? I don't think this is one of his pseudonyms. He had a couple of them that were very weird, like, Justice Be Good or something like that, but... Are you quoting some type of, like, national... Isn't that from National Treasure? No. I thought that was, like, the Clarence Do Good Letters or something like that.

That might be him. I think it might have been, actually, yeah. We'll get into that. I gotta watch that movie again. It's like one of Nick Cage's best movies. It is. Okay, so a couple things. I didn't realize that the majority of kind of this,

not the majority of it, but kind of a central focal point was Galveston. That's actually where I'm going for Thanksgiving. Really? Yeah. Hmm. So I'll be able to, it'll be cool if I can actually find some of this stuff down there. Because I'm sure there's, didn't it mention,

like I read something about a plaque being down there and some other. stuff. Yeah. Where Gordon Granger came and showed up in Galveston and he gave the general order, there's a plaque down there and I want to say he's ass backwards as Texas is sometimes. They started celebrating Juneteenth in like 1980. They made it a national holiday, but a state holiday there. Which it took everybody else

until what last year? It's embarrassing to say, man, but I didn't even know what this was until like up until a couple years ago. Well, that's why we're doing it. Because there's probably a bunch of other people that don't know what it is. So what's even just stands out kind of weird to me is that, you know, during this point of the Civil War, when the United One and they were having to travel to Texas because it was essentially the frontier of the United States at that point, It was the farthest point established east or west.

So anything that it occurred there was going to be the last place to be notified. It's weird because, like, so did basically, did Gordon Granger and his, because he landed, there had been like 2,000 men there that landed in Galveston. So they actually sent them from the Union and ships. I don't think it was ships. I think they just brought them across the country because they'd stopped in Louisiana before that. But Galveston is an island, isn't it? Yeah, so I guess it would have to take ships out to the island.

I'm just wondering why they started Galveston, and they wouldn't have, like, started North Texas and just worked their way. That's weird, right? Well, the whole idea behind Juneteenth is Galveston was the last place where they were freed. That's right, okay. So they had probably already moved through Texas and done all that. Which weirdly makes sense, because if it, I know it's not like off, like way off the coast, but maybe if it was an island, it was more isolated.

Well, and the kind of messed up thing about it was Texas had fought for so long to become their own territory from Mexico. And then... Well, then they called themselves. It was the Republic of Texas. Yeah. So they were their own republic for so long. And after everything had happened with the Confederacy and all that, they had been a part of the South at that point, basically. And they had only been a part of it for like 15 years, I want to say, before all this happened.

And they had actually won their last war that they had had against the North in Texas. So after all this happened and they showed up, they're like, well, we don't really want to listen to you because we just kind of have done our own thing down here for so long. But at the same time, if you're going to be a part of the United States, if you're going to be a part of America, you have to do it. And that's, I think, where a lot of people in Texas fought it, which is kind of embarrassing because you lost. And I learned some stuff about when the actual emancipation proclamation was made. Apparently, it was like Abraham Lincoln threatened to do the emancipation or to make it official if the South didn't, or if the Confederacy didn't surrender by a certain date. which is weird because like why wouldn't you just do it? Like I'm not questioning Lincoln of course or anything like that

but what I'm saying is like why was Lincoln's thing like hey either you guys surrender by the state or we're going to free all your slaves like that seems kind of like weird right? I would question Lincoln personally I know that what he did was good I know the Emancipation Proclamation was a good thing unfortunately he has stated a couple times obviously in the past because he's very dead now,

that they would have not done the Emancipation Proclamation, had the Confederacy just given up. That was like one thing that they saw because there were slaves escaping from the south and coming up to the north. And they realized that they would be a lot better off and the Confederacy would be a lot weaker if they freed slaves. That makes sense.

If they got down there... Well, basically you're cutting a lot of your labor. Yeah. And you're allowing more of your, man, that does make sense when I think about it, like, as horrible as it is. So instead of having to take people that could be your soldiers, you're to go ahead and keep the supply lines for food and supplies and everything like that running, working in factories or fields, things like that, you would all, you already have your labor force. So you're able to dedicate more people to the actual army. Not even just to mention soldiers. If you take everybody from their industries down there

and you stop them from being able to run their commerce down there, then they're not going to have any money to support the army. So if you cut their infrastructure, basically, then they're not going to be able to continue, which... Well, that's kind of a bummer to hear about that that wasn't always the intention, that it was a threat that they were just like, all right, we're going to have to do it now that you guys didn't surrender on the date that I gave you. Yeah, I

I want to think that his intentions were better than they probably were Just because it was a big deal Weren't there two Union? There were two Union Confederacy border states That even had slavery in them After the Emancipation Proclamation It took them It was like Kentucky in someplace else

And I can't remember which other I think it was down in the Mason Dixon line But those even had Those still had slavery So this was something also that what's kind of weird about it is, and I'm probably focusing too much on the actual Emancipation Proclamation, not like what we want to talk about. But I saw like a graph and it showed what part of the country

that the Emancipation Proclamation actually applied to. It's like areas and red it applies to areas and blues. It doesn't. So it didn't apply to any of the Northern Territory or the Union Territory. And then there was a section around. New Orleans. Wasn't that because that was still held by the French? Is that what it was?

I don't know. This would have been pre-Louisiana purchase, I think, right? No. Civil War was up for Louisiana purchase. Yeah, I don't know. We'll have to look that up and see. Because I think that the French still had a stronghold down in Louisiana. So, and that's one of the things that when you actually get older and you look back in history,

you realize that, like, the way you are taught is that you're not taught. the complicated issues or the gray area. Like the union during the Civil War still, there were still slaves in service in the Union states or Union territory, right? I wouldn't say they were necessary slaves because they did consider the North a free territory.

But at the same time, you run into issues where you see indentured servitude and different things like that, where they technically are free. There's a form. There's a form of slavery is still occurring. Because when you run into something like sharecropping or anything like that where you're actually leasing out land, you don't have to be honest with those people.

You don't have to pay them what they deserve. The kind of questionable thing I see is just because the Emancipation Proclamation actually called these territories by name, why it didn't just say the entire United States. Like this didn't apply to everything. It's, I don't know. I don't know if I'm splitting here. It seems like a pretty major, what's it called when you leave? Oh, mission.

Yeah. Well, it was a huge swat of land, but I do think that they just, the North wanted to feel like they were better that they were... This doesn't have to apply to us because we don't like, it doesn't apply to us. Like, we don't keep slaves, yeah, I guess so. So he sent down there, Granger has sent down there to declare General Order number three, which is the actual news of the Emancipation Proclamation. And there were a lot of slaves into, I didn't realize how many slaves were in Texas. A lot of it was Stephen F. Austin, the guy that has the college named after him and that Austin, Texas is named after all that. When he came over, he was bargaining with Mexico to try to carve out more land.

And there's certain parts of Texas that we think of that are like cowboy Texas, cattle ranchers, different things like that. 95% of Texas? It's not 95 because a lot of it coming over. of that is like west Texas because that's more desert east Texas like where galveston is and everything there's a lot of cotton farming down there okay and they wanted to consider it a free land so they would invite people with slaves over there because there was a bunch of land that was untendered and there were a lot of like plantation owner and slave owners that when the civil war was going on because there were battles within the cities and everything like that or

you know some of their plantations could get raided or destroyed a lot of them actually went west with all their slaves to Texas because they felt it was a safer option. Yeah, it was remote. Yeah, or until you know, the Confederacy won and then they could go back home and what or whatnot. 250,000.

That's pretty, that's a lot. Especially in 1865. Yeah. I mean, that's just probably a fairly major city and granted it is Texas, so it is huge so they were spread out. but when the general showed up he gave order number three and the slaves at that point

they were obviously joyous at the same time they had to be concerned because any sort of happiness or anything like that at that point that they showed any sort of excitement there was a good chance that there was going to be retribution there was going to be payback and Texas actually had rules in place at this time that no free black person could really exist in Texas. Like if you were a freed slave, you weren't allowed to be in Texas. So as this happened, and as the Emancipation Proclamation was given there, there was something called the Great Migration, where everybody from the South, all the black slaves from the South,

started to move all over the rest of the country and started to populate it around there. And that's sort of how Juneteenth spread just from Galveston and Texas where it had started because they had their celebration down there whereas not everybody else in the country really knew about it or knew what it was because they had already been freed at that point.

So it was kind of like a... If anything, they would have their own celebration from the time that they were free. Yeah, exactly. Which would have been two years previous. just kind of just kind of thinking about it they started like right away

like after that first year they would use Juneteen I didn't even think about this this is the way they kind of thought about doing this they would educate everyone on their rights to vote because they were provided rights and they would use these Juneteen celebrations

to actually because how many of these people coming off of plantations and everything like that had no idea. They weren't allowed to read. They weren't allowed to write. They had no idea. And as great as it was to be free, kind of the double-ed sort of it,

I think that a lot of them face, which, again, just a white guy bullshitting about this, was the fact that they had never experienced freedom. And when it got to the point of freedom, they were freed with no money, no land, no... Probably a limited skill set. Yeah. So it was almost like they went back into indentured servitude or sharecropping like we were talking about where you do go back to working with the plantation owners.

And there were laws that if you didn't have anywhere else to go and you did stay back on that plantation for a couple nights, you actually owed your slave owner or your previous slave owner rent and money that you didn't have to pay for that spot. So you would go back into work for them, which it's unfortunate. it, but that was a system. It's the cycle of, okay, so we're only, we're not taught to read or write because they want us, you know, servile. Yeah. And we're taught to do a specific skill set. We're freed.

The only need for that skill set is due to the fact that we were just freed from those positions. So the only option we have, at least for a couple generations, is trying to do this and figure out how not to get shafted from a pay standpoint while we try to learn and, you know, educate ourselves on this. The other thing that, you know, I fail to kind of grasp the importance of her kind of just the shock of it is that in 1865, so 1965, that's only 100 years. Yeah.

So we're barely over 150 years from this. I know that sounds like a lot, but if you have two, people in a generation or two people, I guess two generations, one person is eight, lives to be 80, and the next person lives to be 80, you're knocking on that door of it being two people ago. Maybe three. There are still people who are alive that probably heard from someone's mouth directly what slavery was like when it was still in effect. Am I thinking right on that? So if you figure you have a great grandma who is, let's say, 80 years old, and when she was 10, her grandma before that was 80, that would be, yeah, there'd be more than enough time. People's great-grandparents have absolutely...

I'm honestly, like, I can't do math if I tried right now. It's, the generational gap, it's just, it is really nothing. I mean, that's, like you say, that's, you know, it's what... 35 years to the 1900s, 130 years, plus 155 years. I mean, it's... You just threw so many numbers out me right now that I don't know if they're after or not. Just trust me on this one. It is kind of in recent memory, and not only is slavery in recent memory,

but then you're releasing slaves out into the world as freed men that have to suddenly start to follow things where the beginning of Jim Crow era. the beginning of laws and rules that just continue to oppress. And the cycle of oppression, which I'm sure that Juneteenth was a very important day to a lot of people, just because it was that actual being freed, you're being freed into a society that's already trying to oppress you again and trying to figure out the next way to hold you down and stop you from growing. It's a society that now has a hole to fill,

and you're the exact shape for that hole. And so instead of trying to find someone else to fill that, they're just going to try to do what they can to make you do it and put you back in that position. Well, when you start to gain footholds, like in Tulsa, when the Tulsa Race Massacre happened, that happened in a thriving black neighborhood where they were building up their own economy. They were shopping and eating at local black-owned establishments and starting to really make something happen. And obviously the former slaveholders and people that were still angry that they were free, came back in there and massacred them.

Well, did you hear how they kind of got around, you know, these people that were trying to early on celebrate Juneteen? Then then even not so early on, you know, early in this century, what they would do because they weren't allowed to rent out, like, public spaces. So what they would do is a lot of them would like, they'd either pool their money together or they'd meet on, like, public lands, like, by lakes or something like that. Or they'd pool their money together to buy a piece of property specifically for, like, these celebrations. I didn't see that. Like a whole bunch of people would go together so they could have these, you know, have these rights to actually do this on their own land. Well, when I think about it, it's kind of an odd way to think about it

just because when you think about the Fourth of July and you think about America, you tend to think about the cultural melting pot that it is. But if we were told that we had the Declaration of Indeuroreation of Indevales, signed and we became an independent nation at that point. And then every single time we tried to celebrate on the 4th of July, we were basically tried to be pushed back into the shadows and told by England, hey, this isn't, you're not allowed to do this. That seems like a very frustrating thing.

And this was happening in our own country for a different kind of people. it I feel like that would be something that we would naturally want to fight against and push because there was no reason to sign a declaration of independence if you can't be free to celebrate your own thing exactly and I mean there's was a little harder to enforce considering there's an ocean between us

and that's what I guess is the disadvantage even in this situation is when you know all these slaves are free and everything they're then your neighbor well and they were they were forced into their own communities. And luckily I think that was a benefit, if you could really say it, is when you are forced into your own communities,

you can build off of each other. There's a larger support system that's there to help you fight against everybody that's trying to push you down. So there were strength in numbers in certain areas, but at the same time, if you just want to celebrate, You just want to be free. There's really, you have to do it inside your own communities because everybody else around you doesn't agree with what's happening.

Yeah, I read a fact that said, I'm trying to think, it was within a 40-year span, that within a 40-year span, I think they say that 5 million black people left the state of Texas to move to other parts of the country. And I'm trying to remember exactly what it was. Because I was just thinking about it as like, okay first of all that many people

having kind of an exodus from that state just yeah like and they would go places that were more culturally accepting so a lot of them went to like the West Coast you had people heading toward

you know the the East Coast and everything I'm trying to find out where this fact is because it was nuts one of the things that amazes me about it is the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation was January 1st, 1863, but we didn't ratify the 13th Amendment against slavery until the end of 1965. So although the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, it technically wasn't law.

Is that what it is? It wasn't outright a full freedom against slavery until 19. What it basically was, I guess, if it was issued during the Civil War by the Commander-in-Chief of the Union, army which would have been Lincoln. At that point it's a military order. Is it kind of like martial law then in a way? Because you're enforcing that rule militarily. Well and you're also enforcing it in a section of the country that you're actively fighting against. Or occupying. And then occupying after their defeat. So here's the number. So from 1940 through 1970s, so sorry, 30 years. They called the second wave of

the Great Migration. More than 5 million black people left Texas. Louisette, oh, oh, sorry, Texas, Louisiana, and other parts of the south for the north and west coast. In the 1900s? Yeah, 1940 to 1970. Jeez. Yeah. Just to go to other areas of the country.

And they say a lot of that, because that was kind of the second migration win, because Juneteenth, just from what I've read, kind of goes on, it kind of has an ebb and up flow to it when it's popular or when it's actually being celebrated. And of course, if there are certain events, Jim Crow lost, things like that, they're not going to be celebrating as much. Not because, of course, they don't want to, just because there's other shit that they're dealing with.

They're oppressed, yeah. They're going through all sorts of different things. So they said during this time frame, you know, that 30-year time frame, when you had all of them kind of spreading out throughout the country, what that allowed them to do is they were able to take Juneteenth Day to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, other places, you know, spread around. And so that's why now you do get a lot more, you know, a lot more areas of the country that are aware of what this is.

And what, I mean, you probably knew about this for a while. I didn't know about this until, like I was saying, a couple years ago. And it was just kind of part of me was like, well, I know they didn't teach this in school, which they should. Yeah, absolutely. Everything. But, you know, small town school citizens.

system is just kind of, you're going to gloss over sections of history anyway, so you're definitely going to miss anything that's going to be controversial or that requires any type of thought or, you know, thoughtful debate. And then I guess it just was never really in that, the, she does, it sounds like the zeitgeist, like the cultural zeitgeist, for me to really pick up on it. It's, to me, it's so much of the things that we get taught in school are, I hate to use the term, but it's really the only term that you can use. They're just whitewashed.

Yeah. It's anything that's deemed, that's deemed, and it's not that it's deemed inappropriate or anything like that. It's just deemed not what not relevant. Yeah. It's not necessary for you to know this to know history. Well, and like growing up where I did here, we had like a week or two for like Native American studies, which throughout our, all the wars throughout all the times that Native Americans were here. You can't fit that in a week.

No. But it doesn't fit. And think of it. That's because that they were the native people here. And that's also a big thing in this state. Absolutely. Is that cultural heritage. Think of it someplace that like you're not part of that culture or anything and you're

not part of that heritage that they're definitely not going to address it, especially, you know, in this area. No. So much of it. is I would like to think that it's geographical. I hope that this is taught in other cities and other states, but really the reason that we wanted to do just this episode is to just kind of try to get the word out there and explain to what it is, because as white people, we don't always get to learn about other cultures like we're talking about in school.

Until we re-researched it on this, my understanding of it was after kind of hearing what it was. it was the it's they don't use the term celebration it's the trying to think what do you what do you say if like a day is meant to celebrate something like a day of remembrance

yeah it's like the day of acknowledgement I can't remember what the term is oh it's commemorating that's the word I can't yeah I don't know how I can come up commemorating so I thought that it was the commemoration of the actual date in which the last slaves were notified of the Emancipation Proclamation of their freedom.

So it doesn't technically hit that date because there were dates when, you know, slavery in either one form or another or in remote little areas that weren't reached. It still occurred for years after that. Oh, yeah. But this is when it is kind of agreed upon or was the date selected to be the commemoration date for kind of all of that happening. Well, and really the way that I look at June. Juneteenth is a lot like, again, another shitty comparison, but it's a lot like Pride Month.

Like, Pride Month isn't for us. Pride Month is something where we can be supportive of it, but we'll never really understand it. And Juneteenth really isn't for us either, but it's also a way where you can be an ally. You can be somebody that does support it. Just being aware of it. Yeah. And everything. So, yeah, that's all we really wanted to do is just kind of give some backstory to.

it and kind of give the details and kind of explained what it was about and the struggle, you know, all these people went through and it's just good to know. It's something that they continue to go through and something that as we're more cognizant of it and as we can be more supportive towards it, hopefully it does bring it more out into a cultural atmosphere where there are people that will get out and say, hey, it, we understand what you're going through. We hope that it gets better. We'd like to get better.

Our country is nowhere near where it should be, but if we can start recognizing these things. Just need to treat each other good. As simple as it is and everything like that, just treat good people well, regardless of who they are or what they look like or anything like that because there's a lot of assholes that look just like you. Find good people wherever you can.

Any race, color and creed that's out there, They all have their own struggles. It may not be the same as yours, but you have to understand that struggles are struggles no matter what color you are. And the more you can support people and the more you can be there for them, the better off they'll be.

And honestly, the better off you'll be. Here you go. All right, guys, we hope you like this shorter episode. We might do a couple of these just if we're coming off on like a major holiday or something we feel needs acknowledgement. So stay tuned.

Peace.