Freedom Isn’t Always On Time.

This week on It’s Okay, we’re taking a journey through American history and tracing the long road to freedom. From the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the events that led to Juneteenth, we’re exploring how the promise of liberty evolved throughout our nation’s history.

What exactly is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? How did the Civil War shape the country we know today? And what can we learn from the people who fought, sacrificed, and persevered to move America closer to its founding ideals?

This isn’t a history lecture—it’s a conversation about the past, the progress that’s been made, and the ongoing story of freedom in America. Whether you’re familiar with Juneteenth or just learning about it, this episode offers an easy-to-follow timeline and a thoughtful look at one of the most important chapters in American history.

So grab your favorite drink, get comfortable, and join me as we connect the dots from 1776 to Juneteenth and reflect on the journey that helped shape our nation.

Because understanding where we’ve been helps us better understand where we’re going—and it’s okay to keep learning together. ❤️🎙️🇺🇸🖤💚❤️

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Hey, welcome back to It's Okay, the podcast. Hello, you guys. Welcome into bonus episodes. These are going to be bonus episodes, I think. They're not really just headlining episodes. They're really just bonuses because it's really just stuff that I'm interested in. It's not like I want to platform it throughout the podcast because I don't know. It's not like the world or like everyone is interested in these type of topics. And I totally get it. A lot of people want to just listen to, you know, whatever. And I get it. But these things are interesting to me. And I want to hop on the mic and just talk about it because it's interesting. It's interesting. I love learning about history, America's history, black history, um, the history of the Holocaust, the history of the Middle East, um, and just the history of the world. It's all very, very interesting to me. I really, really like it. And so this is like a prerequisite episode into that. So all of this stuff that we're covering, I mean, it is numerous amounts of facts. You have to check YouTube, Chat GBT, Grok, you have to look up articles and watch documentaries and find books and audible books about uh historians who have discussed all of this and just really, really check your facts, quite literally. But this episode is inspired by Juneteenth and as well as the celebration of America for 250 years. This great nation. I mentioned in the episode Another Week in America, that episode. Definitely go back and listen to it. It's fun, it's a fun episode. But we, you know, discuss that we are coming up on that. And Juneteenth is before uh July 4th, Independence Day. And these things are two separate celebrations, but they're all interconnected in like this beautiful, huge way, right? And it's like, okay, why was Juneteenth a thing? And you kind of have to go back a little bit to find out why Juneteenth even is a thing, you know? And a whole host of other things. But finding all of this stuff out, I thought it would be cool to, yeah, dive into Juneteenth and like that time period of like 1865 and like kind of go back and then like work our way up. And then we're gonna even go even further back from 1776 and before because it's just very interesting how we as blacks even got here and what that looked like for us, and um how we ended up through the progression of going into 1865 and all of those great things, right? But um uh with 1865 and with 1776 and the celebration of July 4th coming up, you know, I thought it would be fitting to kind of discuss these great things. In 1776, right, we have America who wants to part ways from the British Empire that is trying to control them, their taxes, they're telling them that they can't make goods, you can't produce things, you can't have different ideas, you can do nothing but work. Everyone, everyone. And everyone's like, uh, no, uh, uh, that's not a great life to live. Yada yada yada, blase fair. And they're actually controlling them as they're in this body of land that we now call America, like they're all across the freaking Atlantic and they're controlling these people. And mindful, like they didn't have phones, telegrams, different things like that. Uh a letter that you send to someone quite literally could make it to them a year later. That's how unstable their communication was, terrible. But these are the things that they were experiencing and trying to flee from, right? So before 1776, I thought it was very interesting because I don't necessarily in this episode want to talk about 1776, it's more about Juneteenth and what that all means for the community. So even before 1776 and the declaration of independence from the British, you know, there was a progression stage of that time period, which in another bonus episode we're gonna fully dive into. I will fully dive into, but in the year before 1776, you had, you know, the different colonies. Um, they were all starting to form their colonies and different things like that. You had Virginia, New Jersey, those in the north creating their colonies. And they were trying to get everyone on board with seceding and becoming independent from the British. And they knew that they were going to have to fight. They were gonna have to fight for their freedom from these people and become their own country, pretty much. And so at this time in Virginia, Virginia was the pretty much, you could say, start, I guess, to the birth of America, in a sense. And again, we'll get into the history of all of that in another bonus episode, but even the hearing of slaves being um first brought to Virginia. That was the first place that they ever um brought slaves, but uh blacks and African Americans, or I guess we weren't considered blacks back then, we were considered African Americans, and this is way before 1776. Had been traveling to America and actually uh traded and congregated with the Native Americans, they also bred with the Native Americans, so you know you have Africans and Native Americans um having children together and different things like that. That been that's been a thing, so it wasn't like Africans hadn't come to America before, they definitely, definitely had traveled here so so much. But that's a different bonus episode. But the first slaves were uh Virginia. You hear about that in the um is it 1619 project? Uh yeah, that's when I guess during that time period the first slaves are brought in and different things like that. Virginia, Virginia, so that, but yeah, Virginia is pretty much the powerhouse, the epicenter of the colonies. And so the governor at the time um said and issued out, you know, a letter, a statement that they were going to hereby declare all intended, all or excuse me, indentant servants, negroes free that are able and willing to bear arms. So slaves predominantly in the south were trying to flee to the north in order to be free, fight this war amongst the uh Union troops and declare their independence from the British and be free as well. Now, of course, when they got there, um they fought in the war, they built trenches and uh handled, you know, um weaponry and did kind of like manual labor and different things like that. Even women and children fled as well just to be free. And um, whenever the statement was issued out, they didn't expect women and children to come, really just was a statement to men, but you know, slaves were trying to be free, and so the women and children were like nurses and like cooks and like um watching children and different things like that. But that was I thought very interesting to mention that there were calls for slaves to be free in order to fight this war, and this is before the civil war, before you know the um introduction of the abolishment of slavery was ever even mentioned, but um these were debates and conversations that the country was having, you know, like abolishing slavery, this isn't right, like this is what we need to do, this is you know, different things like that. And I thought it was interesting um to note, but after the American Revolution and you know America won against the Brits and finally became their own nation, and then yeah, uh 1776 declared their independence and different uh things like that, and even after that, um, the slaves that came to fight the war in order to be free, um, some of them were sent back to their slave masters, some of them um decided to go to other parts and migrate. I saw that some went to Canada, some even went to like back to the Caribbean and different things like that, and um some were just free pretty much, but slavery was still going on even after this, and you know, so they have decided to become their own country, and by this time, like we've got a whole body of government that has uh officiated itself with the um body of Congress and the Senate and the representatives, and you have pretty much America as these colonies, and they're starting to become states of America, becoming a part of the Union, and and uh and very interestingly, uh and very interestingly you hear about the North and the South, and the North was against slavery, did not have slaves, did not have anything like that, and then you had the South that was very much had slaves, practiced slavery, and wanted to keep that uh going, pretty much, and so the government at the time considered itself balanced, right? There wasn't any parties, there wasn't a Democratic Party, there wasn't a Republican Party, like that wasn't a thing quite just yet. It was pretty much for slavery against slavery. That's like how they separated themselves, and like the North was against it and had its own states within itself, then you had the South that was for slavery, and they all had their different states um that were for slavery, and there were 11 that were free states, no slavery, and there were 11 states that were that were for slavery, and so they are growing every like the states are growing, people are creating territory and you know creating this state, and oh Missouri is now gonna be a state. Now, Texas is gonna be a state, like there was wars all over that, gonna get all into that, to the bonus episodes where we truly go in depth. But yeah, this is now where the Civil War is being introduced, and this is described as the most bloodiest war that was ever fought on American soil, even bloodier than the American Revolution for our independence, where we declared and uh won our independence in 1776. But the Civil War is starting to come into play because the North and the South are fighting each other over the idea of slavery. But not only are they fighting each other over the idea of slavery, they're fighting each other over the idea that the federal government cannot tell states what to do. So if we want to have slaves, the government, the federal government cannot tell us that we cannot do that. And now this is something that I thought was very interesting as well, is that the North did not have slaves because they were pretty much industrialized and were using machinery in order to do manual labor. Like they didn't need people to pick this or to um to do the manual things, like they were creating machinery in order to do this. The cotton gin we learned about where we learned in school, like was a machine in order to collect cotton, clean cotton, and different things like that. You didn't need people to do that, and the north is like, you guys don't need slaves. We have completely like industrialized, we don't need slaves, like you guys don't need slaves. This is the kicker. The South was, of course, using slavery as free labor. The slaves were not getting paid anything, they were, you know, given food and like a place to sleep, and you know, we can talk about all the conditions in a bonus episode, but that was the deal for the slaves. Crappy, terrible, horrible, no good, evil. Yes, and they were, of course, keeping all the proceeds, the slave owners, the um the you know, beneficiaries, like the government, those that oversaw the states, um, the governors of those states, the representatives of those states, were keeping the proceeds for themselves as well, enriching themselves and enriching the land. And nothing was gonna so it was a good deal for them. They're like, no, we're not gonna not have slaves, like y'all are tripping. And so this is where this just this fight is just keep going. And they're fighting about this in the government at the highest level, right? You know, it's the same thing that we have now, where you have a senator and a representative from your state that goes federally and locally and fights on your behalf for what you want. The South wasn't doing that, obviously. The South was representing their needs, their interests, right? They're going to locally and for the government saying, like, no, we need to keep slaves, and it's just a whole, a whole terrible predicament. But again, this is like a you know, federal versus state type of fight in a way. Um, but again, like the North had representatives and senators as well fighting on the behalf of the abolishment of slavery, and there were a lot of famous like abolitionists and different things like that. Abolitionist is, you know, people who are trying to abolish slavery. It was a whole movement. We love it. And and like I said before, there were no political parties and different things like that. Now, now the southern states did consider themselves, you know, the Confederate states, the democratic states. And in order to oppose this, the North had to create a strong political party behind themselves, and that became the Republican Party. Now, this is something that a lot of people kind of forget, I think, that the Democratic Party, you know, you hear um the Democratic Party, you know, we're for everyone, we're um, we're this, we're that, and we fight for this and we fight for that, and blasé fair, and uh bloat for blue, no matter who, these dumb things when the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, and the Republican Party was a party that was in favor of fighting against slavery, and created this party to fight these people against slavery, and I mean this probably won't be a bonus episode. We're probably gonna definitely make it a highlight of how like corrupted our government is and how brainwashing they are. I've been reading Helter Skelter and the um Manson murders and the CIA involvement behind it and how just cruel the government uh is against its citizens, with quite literally brainwashing through all types of things. They didn't have social media back then, so they used to do it with speech, with articles and drawings and different things like that. Now they do it with social media and pay this person to say this and blase fair. But yeah, it kind of is weird how you switch it, and it's like the Republican Party is the racist party and the Democratic Party isn't. And it's like, how did that switch? I don't think it didn't switch, but it's fine. Um, and now you know you have your uh presidents that get introduced, and we'll go over the presidents before Abraham Lincoln and their involvement in slavery. But Abraham Lincoln comes along, right? He is a representative, he comes along, and he is he is inducted into the Republican Party, and it's kind of famous that we don't even know this as well. Abraham Lincoln didn't necessarily try to end slavery, that actually wasn't his goal. His goal was to keep the North and the South together, he didn't want them to be two different like countries, pretty much. You know, like he wanted all of the colonies and places and country or and um territories that were trying to become states to be a part of the union, one union. We don't need to be separated into different countries and provinces and different things like that. Like, no, we need to be one. And he was like, I will even let you keep your slaves if you just let us be one country. And the South was still like, nah, and so. He was like, okay, we gotta get rid of the whole thing. It was a it was uh very interesting to learn that um that wasn't even necessarily his goal. So to think on if the if the South would have taken that deal, like, oh, we get to keep our slaves, but you just want us to be a part of the union, okay, fine. Mm-mm. You could say the Democratic Party was very stupid. They should have taken the deal, but I'm glad they didn't because who knows what the country would be like now. Anyway, I just um I just think that that's you know something. And as Abraham Lincoln is becoming president and they're having these debates and these debates amongst the North and the South, and the North is like no, and the South is like yes, you have the case of the famous slave Dred Scott. We also learned about him in school. We'll go into depth about that um in a different episode. But him and his wife were trying to, you know, become free from their owners. And the owners as well, one of them died, gave the slaves to his wife, and then they were trying to, you know, get a get free. And the wife was like, no, so they're trying to appeal and and have you know the courts step in, suing and trying to gain their freedom. And they went through several different trials, and they were continuously, continuously rejected. But yeah, long story short, appeal to the Supreme Court for you know their freedom and a very famous, still to this day, uh figure in history, um, judge, Chief, Chief Justice Roger Taney, Taney, however you say it, T-A-N-E-Y, um, famously said that people of African descent were not included or not intended to be included in the word citizens within the Constitution. And this was, you know, the judge gives a statement after their ruling, and this is pretty much why he said, like, no, I'm not gonna give you your freedom. Racist, we know. Now, this case, of course, sparked so much outrage against the North. They're watching this case, they're listening to this case, they're like, oh my gosh, this is absolutely wrong. Absolutely wrong. Now, once again, like I said, President Abraham Lincoln elected into um presidency, the South is just like, we won't have this, we won't have this. And they eventually start to try to secede from the union. They don't want to be a part of non-slavery. They want to hone, they want to own slaves. You guys wanna not have them, so we're not gonna be a part of anything that you have going on. We're gonna elect our own president, and that's exactly what they did. Each state that was in the South started to secede, write, you know, their secession letters and um claim their independence from the Union, and they, you know, formed the Confederate States and they tried to elect a president, and Abraham Lincoln didn't recognize it as legitimate. He was like, absolutely not, um, we not finna have this, and thus you then have the civil war that is brought about, and it was bloody. The North won, the South surrendered. There wasn't like an overkilling or anything. I mean, there definitely was. There was hundreds of thousands of people that died. 80,000 slaves died during the Civil War fighting for their freedoms. And it was it was a very notable time in history, one that we must be very, very, very, very grateful for, that's for sure. And I think people forget that it was I mean largely whites that fought to end uh the slavery the northern the northern whites who killed their own in order to free slaves. Even though the president that wasn't his intent, but he was like, We're going there now, which is crazy, which is which is absolutely crazy. And and as the South surrendered, the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863 is signed by Abraham Lincoln, freeing all slaves in the Confederate States, thus for ending slavery. Ah uh, but not just that easy. So, of course, the Union troops had to go around, let everyone know, they issued out these um these pamphlets, um, there's speculations that they hung them in churches and different things like that. But you had a general of the Union troops, Gordon Granger, who went to Galveston, Texas. This is the birthplace of Juneteenth, pretty much, went to Galveston, Texas, and this is the last place where slavery was still being taken place, even two years after the emancip the emancipation proclamation of 1863. So two years after the signing that slaves were free, slavery was still going on, and it was going on in Galvinston, Texas, still. And even then, you know, they came and told the slaves that they were free. Some slaves still stayed, but they worked for actual um financial gain for their uh previous owners, now employers. Um, some left Texas altogether. Um, but that is the birth of Juneteenth in Galvinston, Texas. Actually, um the slaves the next year in 1866 celebrated on that year and called it Jubilee Day. So they didn't originally call it Juneteenth, they called it you know Jubilee Day. And Juneteenth was then signed into law um as a federal holiday in 2021 by Joe Biden. And thus far, we have Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Now, this federal holiday is I I think it's actually an important day. It definitely is. If you aren't in support of it, it's like uh you're racist. I'm just joking. No, you're not. But like, yeah, it's um I did see some jokes like it's uh, you know, a sham holiday, like da-da-da-da. Like, no, that's actually very that's very serious when you think about it. 1863, all slaves are supposed to be free from that day. Like, there should have been no slaves, but two years after that, you still had people who were enslaved, and that should not have been the case. But at the same time, you know, they're saying like they had to go around and tell people that they won the war, and that by them winning the war, thus far, slavery is no longer free. When we think of wars, like, yes, all of these people died, but like you have people who fled the war, they didn't want to be a part of it, and a lot of people fled to Texas, which I didn't even know. Like, they didn't want to be killed, they didn't want to be, you know, um put into the war, they didn't want any parts of it, so they fled to Texas. So there was like an influx of like slaves and like slave owners who wanted to keep their slaves, wanted to not be a part of it, so they fled to Texas, and that was like, you know, a huge group of people. And yeah, they didn't have like telephones and broadcastings across the world and news stations in order to tell people, so they had to, you know, send word, like, hey, now it taking them two years to do that. I mean, I don't know, I guess. Like, we can send a message to someone across the world in literally one second. So I don't know what it's like to have to spread the news for years. So that could have played a uh a factor in why they were still enslaved. Very well could be the case. Who actually? Who actually knows? It's very much you know speculation at that point, but I just think that it's uh it's pretty crazy. It's pretty crazy, pretty crazy to think about the history of this country and how things went about. Reading the Declaration of Independence and all these proclamations and different different things that are very crazy. I saw something where the South, you know, the South had representatives, and you have the states that sign things into law, and it has nothing to do with the federal government. I think people, you know, kind of forget that. The federal government and your state government are two completely different things, and it is true, the federal government cannot tell a state what to do, they should not be able to. And you have some presidents who kind of get a little too over the top and do it anyway, and we'll get into on a different episode presidents that have um broke that um broke that barrier. And two people's surprises, Trump has not broke that barrier, but you could hear from someone like ah ah yeah yeah, it's like okay, whatever. But the southern states signed into law that if a slave um escapes and is caught, doesn't matter where they are, the federal government is to return them back to the owner. Um, and if anyone helps them, anyone helped them, they are to be penalized, jailed, whatever their uh consequences. And that is supposed to be enforced by the federal government. And the North was like, oh, absolutely not. The federal government is not gonna be involved in your sadistic ways. And so that's uh another thing that led up to the Civil War. But I thought that that was very interesting. That's something that I didn't know about. Like I knew that there were like bounties, like you could get in trouble if you did, but I didn't know that they signed it into law and like made it so that the federal government had to enforce those laws. And I just think that it's um very crazy because they didn't want the federal government to tell them what to do, but the Democrats, the slavery-owning, the slavery-owning Democrats wanted the federal government to catch their slaves and penalize anyone who helped them. Very sick, very, very sick. So then to you know, learn all of these, you know, different facts, these different things, it's very enlightening, it's very eye-opening to the world that we live in today. And I just I find it all very interesting. I find it all very, very interesting. Now, on the next upcoming episode of It's Okay Comma, we're gonna go all the way back to 1776 and before, right? So we're gonna discuss in that episode a little bit more about slavery and what that looks like, how it started, the um it, the um the Atlantic slave trade that ended, that happened from Africa, and where all the slaves ended up going and different things like that, and the progression from 1619, I guess, to 1776, and then we'll make our way back to uh 1865, the final freeing of the last slaves. Very, very amazing. All of the things that this country has gone through, and we we love it, we love it, we absolutely love it. But this is the end of It's Okay, comma the podcast history lesson. It's just no, it's not necessarily a history lesson, it's just me kind of researching different things and like wanting to talk about it on my podcast. That's really it. It's my podcast, I talk about what I want to talk about, and this is just bonus episodes. I'm not really gonna, like I said, headline these. These are just like fun things for me to turn into like a creative thing, you know. I don't know. I really like it. I really like it. But happy belated Juneteenth. I only got a happy Juneteenth from two people, my dad being one of them and like some random person. Um, it wasn't really uh largely celebrated by my family or by um the community that I'm in or anything like that. It's just kind of like, you know, an online presence. I know that they celebrated down in Texas, and I wish I could have been there for it. It looked so much fun, it looked so lit. Um, but regardless, I think that it is absolutely amazing. And I don't know, I don't think it can be necessarily told without the um July 4th component and different things like that. I saw someone um speaking about Juneteenth at the White House with uh Joe Biden whenever he signed it into law, you know, when she said that she would like for it to be a celebration from like June 19th all the way to July 4th. That would be a lot of partying, but like I'm on board for that because it's like, you know, you can't have one without the other, and you can't have the other without one. Makes sense to me. I don't know. But yeah, just the the history of this country itself is really, really interesting. It's really awesome, and I love to be a part of it. Um, I've kind of yeah, been wanting to do episodes like this uh for quite some time. My dad actually kind of gave me a little bit of the idea behind our last name. So you guys know I'm Amber Hitchcock, host of the It's Okay podcast. But my last name is Hitchcock, and my last name is European. So I uh when it's time to officially receive our reparations, I possibly am someone who will receive them because just off of technicality, I mean I'm black, but I have a European last name. So somewhere on down the line, I of course was a descendant from a slave uh of some way because you know Hitchcock was given to slaves. So from what I gather, I think. I think also I'm learning that um even though slaves uh came here, um, were traded here, um there were still blacks that came here willingly migrated here, and they just didn't come to the to the south, they went to the north. So we're gonna do a whole bonus episode on a whole host of amazing Africans that migrated here and just went to the north and like had really great things for themselves. So definitely stay tuned for the second part of It's Okay, comma the podcast. Cute little fun history lesson slash um thing. I don't know. But you guys enjoy the rest of the week. Take it easy. I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you're looking forward to the second episode of this. And always remember, no matter what, no matter who you are, no matter your race, your sexuality, your skin tone, your life, your hardships, anything is possible. God is on your side, I'm on your side, and remember it's okay.