The Stolen Time: Juneteenth's Untold Truth

Chapters

• 0:00 Freedom Announced But Not Delivered
• 4:03 What Was Stolen: Generational Theft
• 12:53 Post-Slavery Chains: Black Codes to Jim Crow
• 22:42 Joy As Rebellion: Why We Celebrate
• 29:05 Reparations Of The Soul: Healing Practices
• 36:21 Reclaiming Our Timeline: Beyond Survival

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What if I told you freedom was declared but not delivered? That while fireworks were bursting in the sky, chains were still clanking in the fields? That June 19th didn't mark the end of slavery but the beginning of a new kind of struggle? Today, we're not just talking about emancipation. We're confronting the stolen time, the generational trauma and the sacred resilience that lives in our blood. This isn't just a holiday, it's a soul reckoning. This is Juneteenth Trigger warning. Today's episode contains discussions of slavery, systemic racism, trauma and historical violence. Listener, discretion is advised. This conversation is designed to be healing, but we will not water down the truth. If you need a moment or feel overwhelmed, give yourself permission to pause and return when you're ready. Welcome to Life Points with Rhonda, where real life meets purpose, healing and deep truth. I'm your host, rhonda, and today we're going there Not just to celebrate Juneteenth, but to honor the soul of it and to talk about what this day really means for us as Black people in America. So, whether you're driving, walking, resting or reclaiming your time, I want to invite you into this sacred space. We're not just going to learn, we're going to feel Before we dive in. I'd love for you to take a moment and share this episode with someone who needs it. Subscribe to Life Points with Rhonda on YouTube and all streaming platforms and connect with me on Instagram, facebook and Patreon under Life Points with Rhonda. Your support keeps this space alive.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Freedom announced but not delivered. Freedom announced but not delivered. June 19, 1865. A hot, heavy day in Galveston, texas. Union soldiers rode in like thunder bringing news that slavery had been abolished two and a half years prior. Let that sink in. Two years of stolen time. Two years of mothers still having their babies ripped from their arms. Two years of black men still being beaten in the fields while their freedom was already law. Two years of black women cooking, cleaning and enduring abuse in homes. They were no longer legally bound to. No reparations, no apologies, just delayed truth and calculated silence. Juneteenth marks the day the last known enslaved people heard they were free. But that day didn't bring freedom itself. There was no mass liberation parade, no check, no sanctuary, just confusion and fear and questions. Imagine finding out that you were legally free, but still standing on the same plantation with no land, no money and nowhere to go. The truth is, juneteenth didn't end slavery. It simply made it undeniable. And here's the part they don't teach in school. Those enslavers knew. They knew the war was over, they knew the proclamation had been signed, and they deliberately chose to withhold that truth, to squeeze out every last drop of unpaid labor from our ancestors. It wasn't an accident. It was oppression with intention.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Juneteenth is not just a celebration. It's a reckoning, a moment to confront the bitter contradiction of being declared free in a nation that still saw us as property, still wrote us out of the Constitution, still built its wealth on our backs and then gave us nothing but trauma in return. And yet we're still here. Juneteenth is proof that even when freedom is late, even when justice is delayed, we carry within us the unyielding spirit of those who refuse to be erased. That is the heartbeat of this day not fireworks, not corporate ads, but a fire deep in our bones that says we will not be forgotten and we will not be silenced.

Speaker 1: 4:03

What was stolen? The generational debt that hasn't been paid? Freedom, when it finally came, didn't come with a check. It didn't come with healing, it didn't come with a plan. It came with silence, delay and empty hands. And to understand the full meaning of Juneteenth, we have to talk honestly, brutally honestly, about what was taken, because you cannot celebrate liberation without first mourning the theft, and for Black Americans, that theft is layered, intentional and still active. Let's start with the obvious the physical Time was stolen, not months, not years. Generations, not months, not years. Generations Entire bloodlines spent laboring under the hot sun, sunrise to sunset, birthing children who would also be enslaved, stripped of freedom before they could speak.

Speaker 1: 4:54

We speak of slavery like it was a distant chapter in a history book, but the truth is this it lasted over 246 years. That's 10 generations of unpaid labor, 10 generations of lost birthdays, broken families, whippings, chains and forced silence. That time was not just stolen, it was weaponized. It was used to build the White House, to cultivate cotton that fueled the world economy, to create Wall Street, to pad Ivy League endowments, to birth dynasties of wealth that still rule American commerce today. All while we, our people, were branded like cattle, sold like shoes and worked until the tendons in their hands gave out. And when they finally said we were free, we were given nothing no land, no tools, no mental health care, no trauma processing, no reparations. Let's pause here and let this truth settle. White families received reparations for the loss of their slaves. The slave owners were compensated. Black people, we were compensated with homelessness, with poverty, with violence, with more chains, just with a different name. So when people say slavery was a long time ago and ask why we're still talking about it, we must remind them slavery doesn't just live in memory, it lives in the system.

Speaker 1: 6:17

The theft of identity Beyond time, something far more sacred was stolen Our identity. Enslavement wasn't just physical, it was cultural genocide. Our names were changed, our languages were erased, our religions were demonized, our spiritual practices were outlawed. Our very personhood was legislated out of existence. Imagine being born into a world where everything that defines you your name, your tongue, your ancestors, your rituals, your songs is treated as filth, beaten out of you, buried in fear For generations. Our people couldn't speak their mother tongues, couldn't honor the Orisa or pour libations for Egungun, couldn't even keep the drum. But here's the miracle we remembered anyway, in whispers in kitchen corners, in coded songs, in braided hairstyles that mapped escape routes. We remembered who we were. But we must not romanticize that resilience, because what was lost was immeasurable. Centuries of cultural memory. Philosophy, medicine and spiritual authority were decimated in the name of civilizing us. The African in us was labeled savage, the power in us was labeled a threat. And we are still unlearning that shame. We are still reclaiming who we were before they told us we were less than human. And that reclamation is spiritual labor, it is resistance, it is generational restoration.

Speaker 1: 7:56

Perhaps one of the most excruciating things stolen during slavery was the sanctity of family. There is no true word in English that captures the horror of watching your child be sold off to another state never to be seen again, of watching your wife be raped repeatedly, knowing no law existed to protect her, of seeing your father lynched because he dared to speak with dignity. Black families were deliberately fragmented. Marriage between enslaved people wasn't recognized. Mothers were kept from their children. Hus between enslaved people wasn't recognized. Mothers were kept from their children. Husbands were sold to break spirits. And the psychological residue of that violence, it, didn't disappear in 1865. To this day, black families face the highest rates of child removal in the foster system. To this day, mass incarceration keeps our men away from their sons. To this day, housing policies, welfare restrictions and racist policing continue the mission of separating the Black household.

Speaker 1: 8:51

This is not coincidental. It is deliberate design. The destruction of the Black family was a strategic move and it worked for a while. But like everything else we've faced, we've learned to hold each other tighter, to recreate family from the ashes. Still, the damage is real and Juneteenth demands that we name it the Theft of Wealth.

Speaker 1: 9:17

When we talk about reparations, many folks think it's just about back pay, but let me break this down clearly. What was stolen wasn't just money, it was generational wealth. Our ancestors were denied the ability to pass on anything tangible to their children no land, no business, no education, no inheritance. Meanwhile, white families were stacking wealth for centuries off of our labor. When emancipation finally came, most Black families owned nothing but the clothes on their backs. Even when we tried to build, like in Tulsa, oklahoma or Rosewood, florida, those thriving Black towns were burned to the ground, and the government didn't just stand by. In some cases it participated. To this day, black families in America hold one-tenth the wealth of white families. Not because we are lazy, not because we don't work hard, but because the game has always been rigged against us. We were locked out of the GI Bill, redlined out of home ownership, denied business loans, paid less for the same work, charged more for the same services, and when we finally begin to rise, the system finds a new way to clip our wings.

Speaker 1: 10:27

Juneteenth is not just about remembering slavery. It's about understanding that the economic impact of slavery is still in play. The theft of mental health we don't talk enough about the psychological toll of chattel slavery, about the trauma of being born into a world where your black skin meant pain, where your intelligence was mocked, where your body was used and discarded. That kind of collective trauma doesn't disappear with a holiday. It gets passed down, encoded in the nervous system, passed from mother to daughter, father to son, from mother to daughter, father to son. It shows up in the way we flinch at sirens, the way we hold our breath when our children leave the house, the way we overachieve, overgive and overwork just to feel safe. We carry grief that was never grieved. We carry wounds that were never treated and for too long we were told to be strong, to suck it up, to pray it away. But strength without healing is survival, not freedom. Juneteenth is a portal, a chance to say enough, enough pretending we're okay, enough dismissing therapy, enough normalizing trauma. We owe it to our ancestors and our descendants to heal, because the work they started can only be completed when we are whole.

Speaker 1: 11:48

The Theft of Truth let's talk about education. How many of us learned the full truth about Juneteenth in school? How many of us knew the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free all enslaved people, that Abraham Lincoln's move was political, not moral, that the North still benefited from slavery economically, that Texas was intentionally used to hide enslaved people as long as possible? How many textbooks dared to talk about slave breeding farms, about the fact that some of the biggest insurance companies and Ivy League institutions were built on slavery profits? We are not ignorant. We have been intentionally miseducated.

Speaker 1: 12:28

Whitewashed history is another form of theft. It denies us the tools to understand, our power to build legacy, to demand justice. That is why Juneteenth is not just a cookout. It is a classroom, it is an altar of truth and in that truth we find clarity, we find fire, we find freedom, the ongoing theft, what they still try to take. Even now, in 2025, the theft hasn't stopped. It just changed form. They try to steal our votes, our voices, our likeness, our genius, our rhythms, our slang, our magic, our joy. We are the most copied people on the planet and yet the most disrespected. They want our culture but not our struggle, our style but not our scars, our rhythm but not our rage. Juneteenth forces us to say you cannot have our spirit without our story. We are not entertainment, we are not statistics. We are not here to be tolerated. We are here to thrive, to lead to love loudly and to live free, not just legally but spiritually.

Speaker 1: 13:39

Post-slavery didn't mean post-oppression. They say the chains were broken on June 19, 1865. But if you listen closely, if you stand still and let the silence speak, you'll hear them again. Not on ankles, not on wrists, but in policies, in prisons, in poverty, in laws, in loopholes, in school districts and housing deeds, in patrol cars and courtrooms. The chains didn't disappear, they just got smarter. This is the truth that Juneteenth forces us to confront that while slavery was declared illegal, the systems built to uphold it never stopped working.

Speaker 1: 14:21

The birth of the Black Codes legal slavery reimagined a Right after the Civil War. Southern states panicked, not because they had lost the war, but because they had lost their labor force. So they moved quickly, crafting a new set of laws to recreate slavery by another name. They called them the Black Codes, and they were as brutal as the whips that once cracked across cotton fields. These laws made it illegal for Black people to be unemployed, homeless, gathering in groups or even walking on the wrong side of the street in some towns. Let that sink in. After centuries of forced labor, we were now being criminalized for not having jobs, jobs we were never given the opportunity to apply for. It was a trap, a cruel, calculated trap, because if you broke one of these laws, you were arrested and fined, and if you couldn't pay the fine and most Black people couldn't you were leased out to work. Who leased you? The same plantation owners who once enslaved you. They called it convict leasing. We call it what it was Slavery 2.0.

Speaker 1: 15:29

Black men were rounded up for fabricated crimes and sold to corporations, railroads and private farms to work in mines, forests and fields no pay, no freedom, no rights. And this was sanctioned by the state. It was legal, encouraged, funded. The 13th Amendment, the loophole that never closed. Most people celebrate the 13th Amendment like it ended slavery, but let's read it word for word Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall exist within the United States. That phrase, except as a punishment for crime, shall exist within the United States. That phrase except as a punishment for crime is the most dangerous loophole in American law, because it allowed slavery to continue legally under the guise of criminal justice, and from that loophole grew an entire system of oppression, mass incarceration. You see, once it became illegal to enslave someone openly, they just criminalized blackness itself. Loitering became a crime, talking back became a crime, looking at a white woman became a crime, voting became nearly impossible. And once labeled a criminal, a black man could be stripped of his rights and leased to work.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Just like in the days before Juneteenth, jim Crow, apartheid, with American branding the end of slavery, did not usher in equality. It simply made white supremacy put on a suit. Enter Jim Crow, a system so deeply evil. It didn't just restrict rights, it attempted to destroy black existence. From the 1870s into the 1960s, this system dictated where we could sit, where we could eat, where we could learn, who we could marry and what neighborhoods we could live in. And let's be clear Jim Crow was not just Southern. Redlining, discriminatory lending, school segregation and housing covenants were alive and well in the North too. The difference was only an accent, not intent.

Speaker 1: 17:33

During this era, lynchings became spectacles. Newspapers printed them, crowds gathered for them, postcards were made from the corpses, and yet no one was arrested. Law enforcement stood by. The courts turned a blind eye. The government did nothing. Our ancestors didn't just fight for civil rights, they fought for the right to live.

Speaker 1: 17:54

Juneteenth cannot be separated from the reality that freedom was a facade for most of the century following emancipation. Every system legal, political, social, economic was designed to keep us down without the chains being visible. The war on blackness masquerading as policy. Fast forward to the 1960s. The civil rights movement forced America to take off its mask and for a moment, just a moment, it seemed like freedom might finally be within reach. But power does not relinquish itself quietly.

Speaker 1: 18:30

As soon as overt racism became unpopular, covert strategies took its place. They called it the war on drugs, but what it really was was a war on Black families. Richard Nixon's own advisor, john Ehrlichman, later admitted we knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, we could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings. Ronald Reagan doubled down, flooding black neighborhoods with crack cocaine, while simultaneously sentencing black people to decades in prison for possession. Meanwhile, white users of powder cocaine faced minor consequences and thus began the explosion of the prison-industrial complex, a new economy built on Black bodies behind bars.

Speaker 1: 19:18

This wasn't about justice. It was about replacement, a new system to control the labor, the lives and the legacy of Black America, without the messy optics of a plantation School-to-prison pipeline grooming the next generation of inmates. Let's talk about the children. Today, black students are suspended and expelled at rates three times higher than white students for the same infractions. Police officers roam the halls of predominantly black schools, funneling students into a justice system that sees them not as children but as criminals in waiting. From an early age, our babies are told you're loud, you're dangerous, you're difficult, you're a problem, and that conditioning follows them from schools to to the streets, to the system. This is not theoretical. This is by design. The same companies that profit from private prisons donate to politicians who vote for harsh sentencing laws, underfund education and cut mental health resources. This is not a broken system. It is a well-oiled machine.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Policing and the Legacy of Slave Patrols. The modern police force did not evolve from some neutral sense of public safety. Its roots lie in slave patrols, white men organized to capture and punish runaway, enslaved Africans. Their mission To protect white property control. Black bodies maintain the racial hierarchy and while the uniforms have changed, the culture remains From Rodney King to Breonna Taylor, from George Floyd to Tyre Nichols, from stop and frisk to broken windows. The policing of black life has been one long, unbroken chain. We are more likely to be pulled over, more likely to be searched, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be killed. And when we are killed, we are also put on trial. Juneteenth must be a time to name this reality, not to shock the system, but to awaken the soul. The very system that once held the whip now holds the badge. And until that is fully confronted, the promise of freedom remains unfulfilled.

Speaker 1: 21:32

The myth of progress why symbolism isn't substance? They'll point to Oprah, to Obama, to the Oscars, to the Juneteenth ice cream in the freezer at Walmart. They'll say, look, we've come so far. But progress isn't measured by symbols, it's measured by systems. And here's the truth we still face a racial wealth gap that will take 228 years to close. Black maternal mortality is three times higher than that of white women. Black men face the highest risk of police violence in the developed world. Black students still attend underfunded schools and are less likely to be offered advanced coursework or counseling. So, yes, we've made symbolic gains, but systems, they still bleed us slowly. This is not to say we are powerless. We are far from that. Us slowly. This is not to say we are powerless. We are far from that. But the narrative that racism is mostly gone is one of the most dangerous lies told in America today.

Speaker 1: 22:31

Juneteenth cannot be separated from the fact that the very forces that once enslaved us simply changed uniforms. That's not pessimism, that's precision Joy as rebellion. Why we celebrate anyway. Precision Joy as rebellion. Why we celebrate anyway. They told us we had nothing to smile about, told us we were too angry, too loud, too proud, too bold. They told us to forget the past, to be quiet, to be grateful. We were free. They told us celebration was inappropriate. But you know what? We danced anyway, we laughed anyway, we gathered anyway. And that, my beautiful people, is what Juneteenth is really about, because, after centuries of being silenced, our joy is a revolutionary act.

Speaker 1: 23:15

The Red Table, more than a meal, a ritual of remembrance. When we gather on Juneteenth, we bring more than plates, we bring spirit, we bring story, we bring survival. The red food barbecue, red velvet cake, watermelon, hibiscus punch isn't just tradition, it's symbolism. Red represents the blood shed by our ancestors, the blood that watered fields, that lined the Atlantic, that fed the roots of this country. Every bite is a quiet offering to those who came before. Those ribs on the grill, an altar, that laughter over spades and dominoes, a libation, that backyard jam session with Frankie, beverly and Maze playing a praise song. We do it because they couldn't, because for centuries our ancestors weren't allowed to gather, to celebrate, to rest, to be human. They risked beatings and death for moments of community. And now we reclaim that space in their honor.

Speaker 1: 24:17

Joy on Juneteenth isn't about pretending the pain didn't happen. It's about saying you didn't break us. Black joy is sacred. Black joy doesn't exist in spite of pain. It exists because of it. It is how we transmute pain into power, how we turn mourning into music, how we turn absence into art. You see it in the way we step, in the way we style our hair, in the way we raise our kids, with rhythm and resistance. It's not just cultural, it's cosmic Every dance move at a Juneteenth block party. Spiritual. Every old school beat in the DJ's crate. Spiritual. Every child running barefoot through the grass knowing they're free to be black and loud and beautiful. Spiritual.

Speaker 1: 25:06

They tried to outlaw our happiness, tried to criminalize our style, tried to steal our laughter and call it unprofessional, unserious, too much. But we never stopped smiling, never stopped making magic from scraps never stopped being excellent. Our joy is not accidental. It's ancestral memory in motion. The music is the medicine. From Negro spirituals to gospel, from blues to jazz, from soul to hip-hop, our sound has always been our sanctuary.

Speaker 1: 25:37

Juneteenth celebrations are full of music, not as entertainment but as liberation. Technology. Spirituals were coated with escape plans. Blues told the truth when no one else would. Jazz bent the rules of time and form. Hip-hop documented our survival when the media refused to, and every beat we've dropped has carried the fingerprint of freedom. When we celebrate with sound, we're not just turning up, we're tapping in. Every Black artist who's ever been told to tone it down is represented at that Juneteenth speaker system. Every choir member who belted Wade in the Water with trembling hands is heard in those harmonies. Every enslaved ancestor who hummed in the cotton fields is amplified in the drumbeat. They say music is universal, but when it's black it's a language of liberation.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Why they fear our joy? There's a reason they try to control it, a reason they they package it, sell it back to us, watered down. A reason Black Joy is constantly policed. Because it is uncontainable, because it says you didn't win, because it radiates a self-love that this world has tried to strip from us joy that refuses to be silenced is dangerous to oppression. That's why they banned the drum. That's why they removed history from textbooks. That's why they removed history from textbooks. That's why they try to regulate what we wear, how we speak, how we sing. Because joy is power. Joy is a memory they can't kill. Joy is the proof that we still carry the divine. Juneteenth Joy says we remember the pain, but we also remember how to rise.

Speaker 1: 27:14

Our elders are the blueprint. When we see elders at Juneteenth gatherings, those unbothered grandmamas with their folding chairs, those uncles two-stepping with a red cup in hand, we are witnessing legacy personified. They are walking archives. They've lived through segregation, through the war on drugs, through miseducation, through displacement, and they still show up smiling, still show up dressed, still know every step to the electric slide. They didn't survive so we could moan. They survived so we could move. Honor them, listen to their stories, put the phone down for a second and watch them. Their presence is a living museum and when you see that elder laugh with their full body, when you see them wipe a joyful tear from their eye, you know what you're witnessing Freedom in real time.

Speaker 1: 28:11

We celebrate because we can. This world will give you every reason to be bitter, every reason to shut down. But we celebrate because our very existence is the answer to their violence. We celebrate because we weren't supposed to be here. Our language was supposed to die, our lineage was supposed to end, our children were supposed to be statistics, our brilliance was supposed to be buried, but we outlived it all and we've turned every inherited scar into a work of art. We've built empires from corners, fashion from struggle, soul, food from scraps, faith from fire.

Speaker 1: 28:47

So don't let anyone tell you Juneteenth is just a holiday. It's a resurrection, a sacred annual remembrance that we are not done. Not done. Building Not done, dreaming Not done, dancing, reparations of the soul, healing what the system never will. They never came with the check, they never knocked on our doors to say we're sorry. They never passed the laws that would have made the healing easier. They built museums but never built the safety net. They gave us a date on the calendar but not the justice our people bled for. And so now we must ask ourselves what do we do with the wound they refuse to close? We begin the sacred work of reparations, not just with money but with the soul, because while the system has failed us time and time again. We are still responsible for our own healing, not because it is fair, not because it is easy, but because our ancestors didn't survive centuries of horror for us to abandon ourselves now.

Speaker 1: 29:51

Healing is not a luxury. It's liberation. For too long, black people have been told to be strong at the expense of being whole. We've been told that therapy is weakness, that showing pain is shameful, that self-care is selfish, but these are lies whispered by systems that benefit from our burnout. The truth is this Healing is not optional. It is ancestral duty. Our grandmothers held too much pain in their bodies. Our grandfathers carried too much silence in their throats. Our parents pushed forward with shoulders heavy from inherited trauma. And now it's our time to say this stops with me. Every time we choose to rest, we rewrite the story. Every time we choose therapy, we break a generational curse. Every time we choose to rest, we rewrite the story. Every time we choose therapy, we break a generational curse. Every time we create boundaries, we tell our ancestors I hear you, I'm finishing what you started. Juneteenth isn't just a day to look back. It's a mirror asking are you truly free? And if the answer is no, then it becomes the portal to begin the journey.

Speaker 1: 30:59

The trauma we carry is real, and it's not ours alone. We were born into grief. Grief that wasn't ours but that wrapped itself around our spirits like a second skin. Grief that showed up in the trembling of our grandmother's hands, in the fear behind our father's warnings, in the anger we couldn't name as children, in the anxiety we tried to pray away but still felt in our chest every time a police car slowed down. This trauma didn't begin with us, but it lives inside us. It lives in our nervous systems, in our blood pressure, in our hyper vigilance, in our deep mistrust of institutions. It lives in our hesit systems, in our blood pressure, in our hypervigilance, in our deep mistrust of institutions. It lives in our hesitations to ask for help, in our fear of rest, in our belief that we have to earn the right to breathe. But what if I told you that you do not have to carry all of this alone anymore? What if the greatest act of rebellion is to put some of it down?

Speaker 1: 31:51

Reparation begins with the body. Our bodies have been battlegrounds Used, exploited, ignored, hypersexualized, underprotected, overpoliced. Our wombs were once breeding grounds for empire. Our backs were bent to build nations, and yet our healing often starts everywhere. But the body, body's permission to rest without guilt. We must breathe deeply, not just to survive but to claim space. We must touch our own skin with reverence, not shame. We must drink water like it's holy. We must stretch, dance, move, not for performance, but for presence. When we listen to the body, we hear the whispers of the ancestors saying you are still here. That means you still have time. We carry their DNA, yes, but we also carry their dreams.

Speaker 1: 32:47

Mental health is not a dirty word. So many of us were raised to pray instead of cry, to shout instead of speak, to survive instead of feel, to keep it moving. But Juneteenth tells us the truth Survival is not the same as freedom. Freedom is emotional intelligence. Freedom is not going numb when someone says I love you. Freedom is not flinching when you see yourself in the mirror. Freedom is not self-sabotaging your blessings because your body has been trained to expect suffering. If we are going to be whole, we have to get real about the mental health crisis in our community. We need licensed black therapists. We need community healing circles. We need safe spaces for grief. We need more than just Sunday sermons. We need somatic release, trauma-informed education and language to name our pain. There is no shame in needing help. The only shame is in pretending you don't.

Speaker 1: 33:44

Reclaiming rituals Our ancestors gave us tools Before we were enslaved. We were spiritual scientists, we were ritual keepers, we were medicine women, we were diviners, herbalists, midwives and philosophers. Our people had entire systems of healing that were demonized, outlawed and suppressed, but they never truly died. Now is the time to remember them. Burning sage and palo santo without intention is not healing. But sitting with your ancestors, lighting a candle and saying their names out loud, that is healing. Pouring a libation with reverence, calling on your Ori, offering prayer to the Orisa, meditating with sound, cleansing with water these are technologies of liberation passed down to us. They are our reparations. If we can reclaim everything else our fashion, our music, our hair then we can reclaim our rituals too.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Telling the truth is a form of healing. We have been lied to over and over Lied to about our history, lied to about our worth, lied to about what it means to be civilized. L lied to about what it means to be civilized, lied to about what it means to be successful, lied to about who we are and what we come from. And those lies became internalized, became beliefs, became identity. But when we speak the truth, we begin to unravel the trauma. When we tell our children the real story of Juneteenth not the watered down version in school books, but the sacred truth, we tell our children the real story of Juneteenth not the watered-down version in school books, but the sacred truth we begin to free them. When we look at ourselves in the mirror and say you are not the pain they put you through, we begin to reprogram our spirits.

Speaker 1: 35:32

Healing doesn't start with medicine. It starts with truth. Freedom is a daily practice, not a destination. The system may never write the check, the government may never fully apologize, the media may never fully center our truth. And yet we do not have to wait for that to begin our liberation, because the most powerful reparations are the ones we give ourselves, when we choose to love ourselves loudly, when we choose to love ourselves loudly, when we choose to rest without guilt, when we choose therapy over trauma bonding, when we choose joy over performance, when we choose to heal, not just cope.

Speaker 1: 36:17

Juneteenth gives us the permission and the responsibility to become the ancestors we needed, reclaiming our timeline, a future beyond survival. They told us our story started with slavery. They taught us history from the point of bondage. They left out the greatness, the brilliance, the empires, the mathematics, the medicine, the cosmologies, the temples, the kings, the queens, the builders, the priestesses. But let me say it clearly Our timeline does not begin in chains, and if it didn't start there, it sure as hell doesn't have to end there. Juneteenth is not just a look back, it's a launch forward. It's a sacred checkpoint, a moment where we ask what will the next 400 years of Black history look like? Because, while they tried to steal our past, we now have the power to reclaim our future.

Speaker 1: 37:08

We were never meant to just survive. Let's be honest, many of us have inherited a mindset that glorifies survival. We know how to hustle, we know how to keep going even when our backs are breaking. We know how to make a dollar stretch, how to make meals from nothing, how to make joy from pain. But we were never meant to only survive.

Speaker 1: 37:28

Survival is not freedom. Survival is reaction. Survival is the bare minimum, and what our ancestors dreamed of wasn't survival, it was sovereignty. It was waking up in a world where we didn't have to prove we belong. It was being able to raise Black children who don't grow up racing for pain. It was freedom of choice of direction, of expression, of timeline. We honor them by expanding beyond what they were allowed to imagine. Time has never been linear. For us In the Western world, time moves like a straight line forward rigid, cold. But in African cosmology, in Yoruba thought, in Black ancestral wisdom, time is circular. Our ancestors are not behind us, they are around us. The future is not a distant point. It is a spiral that we shape with every decision we make.

Speaker 1: 38:22

So when we talk about reclaiming the timeline, we are talking about stepping into our power as co-authors of the universe. We are talking about no longer reacting to the system, but rewriting the rules altogether. Juneteenth is a portal, a spiritual doorway that asks what will you plant, what will you build? What legacy will you leave behind? Because our timeline is not written in ink. It is written in intention, reimagining our institutions from the ground up.

Speaker 1: 38:54

To reclaim our future, we must stop asking for seats at tables that were never built for us. We must build new rooms, new economies, new schools, new languages of power. What would it look like if every Black child learned financial literacy and ancestral wisdom before age 10? We created our own medical cooperatives rooted in holistic, african-centered healing. Our communities pooled resources to buy back the block. We controlled our own food systems, banks, tech platforms, media networks and justice systems. This is not a fantasy. This is what our ancestors prayed for. We cannot beg the oppressor to heal us. We must create new blueprints, because we have the minds, we have the skill, we have the divine technology in our DNA. We don't need permission to be excellent, we need strategy.

Speaker 1: 39:46

Education is the battlefield of the future. If we don't teach our children who they are, the world will teach them who they are not. Our children deserve more than watered-down history and diversity day. They deserve the truth. They deserve to know about Mansa Musa, queen Zinga, the Dogon, the Maroons, marcus Garvey, asada Shakur, harriet Tubman's prophetic visions, fannie Lou Hamer's fire, malcolm X's discipline and the spiritual science of blackness itself. The classroom has always been political, because when you control the mind, you control the destiny. So let's be clear Reclaiming the timeline means reclaiming the curriculum. We must raise children who know they descend from kings, warriors, engineers, oracles and healers. Children who don't just want a job, they want a legacy. Children who know they are worthy, not because of what they achieve, but because of who they are. We are not raising consumers, we are raising creators.

Speaker 1: 40:50

Culture is power. Let's use it to lead. Black culture has always led the world. Our slang becomes global language, our fashion becomes the blueprint for style, our music sets the tempo of the planet, our struggles birth the blueprint for every other movement, and yet we often don't own it, we don't benefit from it, we are copied, commodified and left behind. So reclaiming the timeline means owning our brilliance, protecting it, monetizing it with integrity, sharing it in ways that build us, not just everyone else. Let's be intentional with our influence. Let's stop selling our image for cheap while the world profits from our pain. Let's create platforms that center our joy, our truth and our power, without needing validation, because cultural power is real power, and our power without needing validation, because cultural power is real power. And we already have it.

Speaker 1: 41:44

Black economics the future is in our hands. We spend over $1.6 trillion annually as a collective. We are not poor. We are misdirected, because poverty isn't just a lack of money. It's a lack of access, knowledge and systems that prioritize collective wealth. Imagine a future where we invest in black-owned banks and credit unions. We build community land trusts to stop gentrification, we circulate the black dollar for 30-plus days before it leaves our community, we own our own grocery stores, schools, transportation systems and media outlets. This isn't fantasy, it's math, it's will, it's focus.

Speaker 1: 42:26

Juneteenth should not just be a party. It should be a business summit. It should be a reset, a strategy session, a moment where we say never again will our brilliance build someone else's empire. We are the investment, we are the ROI, reclaiming leadership, redefining power. We have enough influencers. We need leaders, not just on stages, but in neighborhoods, in homes, in schools, in business, in policy, in spirit. Reclaiming the timeline means reclaiming our voice in every space. That doesn't mean replicating systems of oppression and blackface. It means building leadership grounded in Iwapile good character. It means returning to African models of accountability, community wisdom and balance. We are not here to imitate power. We are here to transform it. The future belongs to those who know how to listen deeply, speak truthfully and act with courage. And we've been doing that since the first drumbeat, since the first prayer on stone. Thank you, I'm going to make a little Thank you, thank you.