Since that first anniversary when enslaved Black people finally received news of the Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth has been a celebration of freedom, independence, and possibility. The annual commemoration of that day — June 19, 1865 — has taken shape in the form of gathering, reuniting with family, actualizing radical change and progress.
“My biggest takeaway was that this was an experience of Black folks finding ways to celebrate in the midst of madness,” said Kelsey Daniels, discussing her reintroduction to the day in her late 20s. Daniels is an artist, organizer, and baddie scholar whose work centers around “dreaming as a form of liberation practice … creating spaces for people to imagine worlds beyond the harmful systems that we exist under.” One of the ways that she’s doing this work is through her “Black Dream Experiment,” part of her project as a grant recipient for the “Far South/Border North: Artists and Cultural Practitioners in Community”—a two-year regional program providing financial toward work increasing public awareness about public health, environmental conservation, civic engagement, and social justice. This experiment, taking place from 6 to 9:30 p.m. Thursday at You Belong Here, includes art, music, dialogue, and daydreaming around what an affirming San Diego can look like for all Black people. (Guests can RSVP at bit.ly/BDEImaginationActivation.)
As part of this conversation about Juneteenth and dreams of freedom and liberation, I’ve spoken with Daniels and Bright Gyamfi, an assistant professor of history at UC San Diego whose research focuses on West African and African Diaspora intellectual history, nationalism, gender, Pan-Africanism, Black internationalism, and economic development. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: We know that Juneteenth commemorates the day, in 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned about the Emancipation Proclamation and that they were now free—more than two years after the order had been given. That following year, the first celebrations took place, spreading from Texas to other states. When were you first introduced to this day? What were some of your earliest thoughts/impressions?
Gyamfi: Growing up in North Carolina, I don’t learning about Juneteenth until college. It was in college where I began to learn more robustly about both Black American history, as well as African history, so it was in college that I began to learn more about Juneteenth, what it meant, to think about these ideas of freedom, and also about Black people as agents of their own destiny. One of the things that we know is that now everybody is talking about the celebration of Juneteenth as a national holiday, but when the enslaved Africans were freed, they started celebrating themselves. For me, it had a huge impression—to think about freedom and how freedom is not a gift that is given, but taken, and what do we do with that? It also served as a reminder of the importance of education. Stokley Carmichael said that “the job of the conscious is to make the unconscious, conscious,” so this is not simply a form of celebration, but an invitation to take seriously Black history, especially in these times where books are being banned, the AP course on African American studies is being challenged. For me, this is the impact that discovering this hidden history has had.
Q: Juneteenth is also called Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day—names that ring hopeful, expansive. As a first-round grant recipient for the “Far South/Border North,” part of that work is your “Black Dream Experiment.” Tell us about this project.
Daniels: “Black Dream Experiment,” the seeds were planted in 2020, but I first started talking about it in February of 2021 and thinking about, specifically, the work that I have been doing to organize around liberation in the midst of struggle. I wanted to organize and be intentional in creating space for Black folks’ imagination and came to the theory around when we’re told surviving is a privilege, imagination feel frivolous and inaccessible. So, I really tapped into thinking about how so much of the freedom movement that we have seen in the past, that our ancestors poured into, was a result of imagining outside of the box. This explicitly is around holding space for Black imagination and acknowledging the pain that we navigate, and using that as a launching off point of, ‘Well, what do we want to see ourselves in?’ A lot of times, the conversation ends with, ‘This is what’s wrong’ and making lateral decisions of, ‘This is what’s available to us.’ I think giving space, even if it’s just contained in two hours, of ‘What if these things weren’t the only things possible? What if we could imagine beyond the resources that are currently available to us?’ and really tap into that power. Also, build intentional community beyond the performance and aesthetics of going to events where you’re just there and you say, ‘Hi,’ but it’s around a performance or around something that’s not about intentional connection.
People can expect some wellness activations and collective grounding, collaborating with artists. I’m really big on returning to wellness and reminding people that we already have practices that keep us well, so there’s going to be collective singing, there’ll be some opportunity for dancing. I’m going to show a short film that connects all of these different ways of Black ecstatic and expression, and then, a few other things that I’ve done, as well. There’ll be a really big space for dialogue and having conversations around-the framework that I use is what it is, what it ain’t, what it could be. Getting really clear on, ‘This is what it feels like to be Black in San Diego. These are the things that we don’t want to see,’ but spending a good chunk of time on, ‘Well, what could it be">
Q: In Frederick Douglass’s 1852 keynote address at a Fourth of July celebration, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” he says, in part, “This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn…What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” outlining the hypocrisy of withholding the freedom and promises articulated by the country’s founders from Black people, both enslaved and free. Can you talk a bit about the idea of, and work toward, Black liberation during this time?
Gyamfi: Like you said, he gives this speech on July 5, 1852, as we’re getting ready to march into Lincoln bringing forth the Emancipation Proclamation. What Douglass does for us, in this particular speech that forces the hand of Lincoln (years later) to proclaim the Emancipation Proclamation, for me, highlights the agency of enslaved Africans; they were not waiting. Most of the time we give so much credit to Lincoln as the “father of Black freedom,” but one thing we forget is that he was not necessarily moved-it was enslaved Africans who pushed him. At the same time, it allows us to then think about, how were Black people thinking about freedom? This moment, these people were getting tired of their position and status as enslaved. This goes back to what I meant when I talk about, what happens when we think of “from Africa”? Because when people were coming, they were coming with ideas of freedom, as well, so they knew that it was not normal for them to be enslaved. Within this particular period, we see the question of “Who is human?” being debated.
Q: From your perspective, how would you like to see liberation take shape today?
Gyamfi: When we’re looking forward, how do we build a more equitable world? How do we conceive of liberation today? The way that I’m conceiving of these things, education becomes crucial. The battle has to be on the forefront of education. We have to be relentless in our pursuit of ensuring that Black history is taught, and is taught in its totality, by which I mean a more internationalist perspective. Most of the time, we talk about how Malcolm X traveled to Africa and tried to link African liberation struggles with what was happening in the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr. going to Ghana and coming back and giving a speech about what Ghana can teach us. (W.E.B.) DuBois receiving funding when he gets to Ghana and becoming a Ghanaian citizen because the U.S. had taken away his port. So, when we think about freedom, it also becomes, ‘How can we then connect the struggles of Black America to the Black struggles of those on the African continent, of those in the Caribbean and of those in Latin America, especially in Brazil?’ I think the most effective way will be to diagnose the colonial racial order as a global order, institutionalized by White supremacy, by imperialism, and capitalism. It allows us to then think through how to better conceptualize how we can move forward today. For me, I think of more of an internationalist Black solidarity lens to understanding freedom, which is crucial and critical.
Q: Can you talk about the importance and necessity of dreaming, particularly as you see this practice as specifically important and necessary for Black people?
Daniels: Someone I look to as another person having this really important conversation is Tricia Hersey (author of “Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto” and founder of The Nap Ministry), who has a lot of work on rest as resistance and talks about how when we are exhausted, we can’t imagine. I think a lot about, ‘Who does it serve for us to be dysregulated and kind of just with our nose to the ground?’ It’s these systems, so when we give ourselves permission to imagine beyond what’s been handed to us, it also serves a purpose in the here and now, and also the future. I think dreaming and imagination create the space within us to remind us that this is not our inheritance. We are not put on this earth to suffer and there’s actually so much available to us. I think situating this as an ancestral practice. A lot of times there’s conversations about being our ancestors’ wildest dreams. I don’t think our ancestors’ wildest dreams is solely for us to have a 401(k), right? I think things like embodiment, rest, joy, pleasure, are worthwhile dreams to tap into. When we give ourselves permission to lean into that, new possibilities are shown to us. When we give ourselves permission to rest, we might think of different ways to approach complex problems.
Q: What comes to mind for you now, when thinking about what freedom and liberation ideally looks like for you, individually, and for Black people collectively?
Daniels: For me, when I think of freedom and liberation I think of Nina Simone. I think she had an interview where she said, “Freedom, for me, is no fear.” I think of not living in fear when it comes to showing up fully as myself and dreaming those small dreams. I think liberation means committing myself to this understanding that it could be way more beautiful than this, so how do I align my actions and intentions with that?
When I think of Black folks as a collective, and individually, it looks like this lifelong journey of untangling these beliefs that have taught me that I have to constrict. For Black folks, for us to have gentle spaces for us to unpack our trauma and to dream collectively in a way that isn’t contingent on the resources that we currently have, the systems that we currently have. I always reference Harriet (Tubman) as my homegirl and I really do appreciate that she was somebody who paid attention to the intuitiveness of her dreams. She was a dark-skinned, disabled woman, illiterate, but she took naps, she rested, she talked to God, she used herbs, she moved in ways that were so nonlinear to what we think even other abolitionists’ journeys looked like. I think there’s something in the power of reclaiming our intuition, reclaiming our ancestral practices with the resources that we have available to us now. We do have access to being able to contextualize the harm that we experience, interpersonally. We have tools, and what does it look like to literally take the gifts that our ancestors gave us, and double it?
