June 19, 1865, was going to be like none other for the enslaved in Galveston, Texas. They would learn, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that slavery had ended and so had the Civil War.
A celebration was in order, and it would be called Juneteenth, a joyous occasion with music, dance, and food. They showed up in their Sunday best white clothes, proud and elated to be free. Unfortunately, there would be struggles ahead that would continue for many years to come. To this day, the fight for justice and equality continues. But there has also been much progress and success. These participating creators continue to pay homage to the ancestors through their power of storytelling. You can read it and feel it in their notes. They are heartfelt and rich in gratitude for the tools those before them left behind so that they can go forward with confidence, pride, and determination.
Happy Juneteenth, and here's to the ancestors, never to be forgotten.
Clint Smith
Poet and author, How the Word Is Passed, Above Ground, Counting Descent
I would like my ancestors to know that I do my best to see and honor all of their fullness and complexity. When we examine the history of slavery in particular, it can be tempting to focus singularly on narratives of triumph—stories of those who overcame or escaped the violent, barbaric system. I understand the impulse, and I often share it. It is deeply important to have stories of those who resisted the institution in that way. But I also think it’s important to tell the stories that exist beyond Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. The stories that are more complex and reveal how living in slavery meant living with a series of impossible choices. Those more complicated stories also deserve to be told.
Rebecca Carroll
Creator and author, Billie Was a Black Woman, Surviving the White Gaze
The first time I heard the name Kofi was in college, when my boyfriend at the time, Michael, would occasionally bring up a friend of his named Kofi. I think partly because I was so smitten with the sound of Michael’s voice (he went on to become an internationally acclaimed rap artist), and partly because I was drawn to the cadence of the word, I fell in love with the name Kofi. It wasn’t until my husband, Chris, and I were thinking of boy names when I was pregnant that I remembered the name Kofi, and discovered it meant ’born on a Friday’ in Ghanaian, which made me love it even more. The ancestors have showed up many times throughout my life, but when our son was born in the wee hours of a Friday morning in July 2005, 11 days passed my due date, I knew that was them, saying, ’What we’re not gonna do is let this boy miss his mark of African descent, and his mother’s love.
Chisa Hutchinson
Playwright, Proof of Love
Dear Ancestors,
In an ironic twist, they don’t want us here now. In fact, they’re pretending they never dragged us over here in the first place, telling their kids we straight migrated here for work and what not—lol! Anyway, yeah—they’re trying every which way they know how to get rid of us, so I just want to say thanks for the survival skills. They’re coming in awful handy.
S.A. Cosby
Author, All the Sinners Bleed, My Darkest Prayer, Blacktop Wasteland
My great-great-grandfather founded the church my parents were married in, with seven other Black men two years after the end of the Civil War. There were times I've imagined their greatest dream was for me to be able to speak as a human being without fearing I'd end the day swinging from a tree. I imagine their dreams were filled with peace where love abides and a bit of that Southern hospitality they may have heard so much about but never experienced. I want them to know, on this Juneteenth, we came for everything they said we couldn't have.
And we took it. And made it ours.
Diane Marie Brown
Author, Black Candle Women
My uncle Raymond was a proper son of New Orleans, a place he couldn’t help but boast about when my mom and I would visit each summer. He’d work a full day, then spend his evenings driving us around the city offering personalized tours, stories attached to anything he pointed out. The times spent there resulted in some of my fondest memories–licking snowballs on hot days, walking through Armstrong Park, daring my uncle to drive us across Lake Pontchartrain. It’s not the jazzy, mystical New Orleans that I came to adore but instead the site of these incredible moments of my youth, which has inspired my writing. I’m so grateful to my uncle for sharing his New Orleans with me.
Tracey Rose Peyton
Author, Night Wherever We Go
As writers, we’re assisting the ancestors in a haunting. To borrow from Avery Gordon, we’re making visible unresolved and unacknowledged violence that must be reckoned with.
The last time we had tea, you all were silent. I imagine a list of corrections you have, some valid, but others more about the whimsy of change—the ability to say, "It felt like that one day, but not all my days." You don’t want to be fixed in stone, buried thick again in this new afterlife. You remind me to resist that urge, to pry open the seed of a thing and look at it from all angles, to track its winding threads, and what present evils it has fathered. I hear you and I am grateful for that guidance wherever it leads.
And while we may be bothersome with our desires to disrupt easy narratives and historic silences, we are attempting to be up to that grand task of recovery Toni Morrison talks about. Most days, we’re not capable of it. We’re eager to move on to what’s next. Yet, the ancestors warn us to slow down, to listen, to aid them in this recovery work, because without it, repair just isn’t possible.
Sharon Washington
Creator and performer, Feeding the Dragon and Tony Award nominee
I wouldn't be an actor without having seen Madge Sinclair on TV in the '70's or Rosalind Cash performing Shakespeare. I wouldn't be a Tony-nominated writer without Alice Childress and Adrienne Kennedy. I am standing on their shoulders as I continue to tell our stories to wider audiences, so people listening and watching can see themselves and be inspired to tell their stories. I don't just hold my ancestors' stories—I carry them forward.
Nyani Nkrumah
Author, Wade in the Water
What I would say to my ancestors is simply this. You remained unbowed and unbroken. The stripes on your back did not hold you back, did not extinguish your promise. You emerged triumphant. I know that I stand on the shoulders of giants.
