This past weekend Juneteenth was celebrated. Reason being, African Americans were not free in 1776 when America gained its independence. The same can be said about Juneteenth for my ancestors as well. My grandmother was born in the 1920’s and she was still living on a plantation farm with her parent’s former slave master’s. I learned of this back in 2017 when I was writing my book The Book of Corinthian Chapter One: Beauty in the Bayou. This baffled me. I had a ton of questions. When did slaves in that part of Louisiana learn of their freedom? Why would they still live on a plantation if they were free? Come to find out, my great grandparents were told that they were free at some point later, I’m not sure of the exact date, but they still chose to stay where they were comfortable and work anyway after said date. That was all they knew. This made me understand my family’s history more as well as the plight of our people.
While I wanted to be excited that more black people were celebrating Juneteenth this weekend, a part of me was still saddened. As we can see from the current events, black people are still not “free” in America. Institutional racism is still present which keeps us from experiencing certain levels of freedom. My husband Jarvis Aka RoseDupree talks more about that on his Free the Blind podcast now playing on Spotify, Apple, Google, and Breaker. Also it pains me that some of us still put our trust in to a system that has continued to fail us time and time again. We are literally asking that same system to allow us to be “free”. The day that I had my awakening and really understood who we are and why we’ve been oppressed for centuries, my life changed. When I understood that freedom is a state of mind, I set out to get free by any means necessary. I’m talking more about that in the first chapter of my book available now on Kindle .
The older I get and the more aware I become, I think more like our ancestors Huey Newton, Malcom X, and Marcus Garvey when it comes to freedom. We have to do something different. I believe that when our ancestors said “the revolution would not be televised” they were referring to the inner work that we would have to do to see freedom. Its time for change and that change starts within. Freedom manifests first within the mind and my daughter Freedom Elizabeth is the proof. Check out my latest video where I talk more about this on my youtube channel Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe! I still believe in us and I still believe that we will. Until next time, peace & love-Corinthian
