Feminist Magazine - Wednesday, June 17, 2026

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1. Hi, this is the Corin Tucker Band, and you're listening to KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, and all over the world at kpfk.org.
2. This is Feminist Magazine, a weekly radical radio show and podcast produced by a diverse collective of feminists.
3. And every week we bring you a mix of intersectional stories and guests to help you resist and engage.
4. And I'm Lynn Harris-Ballon, your host today.
5. And this is what feminism can sound like.
6. No New York is a memoir of No Wave and the women who shaped the scene.
7. It's an electrifying new memoir by artist and musician Adele Bertet, and it chronicles the 1970s underground downtown Manhattan scene and the explosive boundary-pushing no-wave movement.
8. And also, it centers the visionary women who drove it.
9. Today, we're joined by the author, Adele Bertet, in conversation with journalist and professor Evelyn MacDonald.
10. Welcome both to Feminist Magazine.
11. Thank you, Lynn. Hi.
12. thank you for having us here and it's great to be back on this and back on this together because
13. not our first time together on this show i know i love that i love the comebacks with new work
14. and you know new stories to tell so please take it away and we're looking forward to a conversation
15. to just hear adele telling us about the book but also evelyn's perspective which is like a whole
16. framing that we'd love to hear.
17. Do you want to begin?
18. Yeah, so I guess I just want to sort of
19. start with how
20. we first met and
21. my reaction at that moment, which I
22. always like to say we have a meet and cute.
23. We met at a men's jail.
24. We did, at Twin Towers
25. downtown. Most notorious
26. jail in the country, by the way.
27. So we were both,
28. you were there as part of
29. Jail Guitar Doors.
30. the now late Wayne Kramer's organization
31. that was bringing music to incarcerated people
32. and named after the clash song about Wayne.
33. And you were one of the musicians taking part in that.
34. And I was a journalist just seeing what you all were doing.
35. And I didn't really know who else was going to be there
36. besides Wayne and the publicist.
37. And they said, this is Adele.
38. And I'm like, hmm, Adele.
39. I wonder who Adele is exactly.
40. And then we started, you and I started talking and all of a sudden I realized who you were, Adele Bertet, who was like a legend to me.
41. And I was so, I was like, forget Wayne Kramer, forget the D.C. Fly.
42. I was like the contortions and the bloods and yeah, yeah.
43. So you know kept in touch then And it great that now we going to talk about some of that period that I knew about you from
44. And I'd also just want to say that we, you know, we kept in touch and you ended up contributing.
45. To Women Who Rock.
46. Yeah.
47. Yeah.
48. Women Who Rock, the collection of women writing about women musicians that came out several years ago.
49. And then that's when we did the interview here.
50. A number of us, a number of the contributors, Alice Bagg and Pai and Solveig and a bunch of us talked on the air.
51. And that turned into Turn It Up, the activist organization.
52. So there's just this ongoing thread.
53. And, you know, I knew of you as a musician and which you are obviously still a musician.
54. The book is about being a musician, but you've also really become an author in that time.
55. And you've written several books recently.
56. Let's talk a little bit about some of the other books you've written and then why you decided to do this book now.
57. It seems like you've been sort of building up to New York and writing about that really storied history of New York in the 70s.
58. What brought you to doing this now?
59. To doing this now?
60. Well, you know, I have it. It's actually the third in a trilogy of memoirs.
61. The first was an auto fiction called Twist Tales of a Queer Girlhood.
62. And I had that had to be an auto fictional account because it was I had a kind of a brutal childhood.
63. Not that I want to win the trauma sweepstakes or anything like that.
64. But it was very important to me to be able to tell that story, just a very working class queer kid story about being able to overcome trauma and how I used music in many ways to do that.
65. And the second book was Peter and the Wolves about my intro to rock and roll in Cleveland.
66. And then I've been thinking about No New York for a long time.
67. And it was really time to finish it and bring it out to the world.
68. And, you know, I think one of my vocations, and I think this goes for a lot of us, all three of us in the room here, is that we want to make the invisible visible as writers and artists and filmmakers, etc.
69. And I think a lot of the women have been given some credence in like books by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley and Mark Masters, like writing about that particular scene.
70. They do talk about the women, but not the importance and the nuance and all of the shades that went into making women strong enough to just work outside of gender and genre and all of the restrictions that those things piled onto us as women.
71. We inspired each other.
72. We were extremely free from all of those restraints or from branding, from all of it.
73. and it really contributed.
74. I think we kind of inspired the men a lot
75. because they were watching what we were doing
76. and like, oh my God, we better like step up
77. because these women are really creating something electric
78. and wild here.
79. So, you know, it was time.
80. And also a lot of those people are gone now.
81. So in many ways, it's a eulogy, you know,
82. for the women that I was close to
83. during that period that passed
84. and for women who are still here,
85. but there's the stories of how,
86. well, this is my take on their stories
87. of how they got started, you know,
88. and it was all within that scene.
89. And, you know, I worked as Brian Eno's assistant
90. during that scene for a while.
91. And it's so interesting
92. because recently Brian Eno has talked about the concept of genius but that oftentimes if you look at artistic movements like the Beats or you know Paris in the 1920s etc he called it scenius
93. And he said that it's less about an individual's brilliance than it is about the scene that gives birth to people.
94. So I thought it was really important to frame that in terms of also, you know, the women, because that's never happened before in history where women came from all over Europe, from all over the country to one place in time at a moment in time.
95. And I think a lot of it was really inspired by Patti Smith, I have to say.
96. Right. And that's certainly your origin story, right? You were in Cleveland and discovered Patty and the life that she was living in New York. And you decided to make the move, right?
97. And yeah, I mean, you know, Patti busted through all genres. I mean, she was incredibly androgynous, which is what we used in those days, as opposed to non-binary. And I still love that word. So she was incredibly androgynous. She was a mystical poet, but using garage band punk rock as her motivator. And no one had ever done anything like that before.
98. It was extraordinary. And it inspired not only other women musicians, but inspired women to pick up Super 8 cameras, to rewrite the canon of literature in a transgressive way like Kathy Acker, and to do, you know, to do art and not be controlled by the ideas of art being an elitist calling where you had to be within this museum system or gallery system.
99. And it was like, no, no, no, we're not we're not going to pay attention to any of that.
100. We're going to create and create on our own terms.
101. And we had each other to support those ideas.
102. You know, do you remember like when you first heard or saw Patty where you where you were?
103. I mean, you were already were you already making music?
104. I was I was hooked up with Peter Lochner, who was my best friend at the time.
105. He was the guitar player in Paraúbu.
106. and we went to see her at the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland.
107. And it was the first time she had played Cleveland
108. and it was the Horses' Record.
109. And I'll never forget it.
110. I mean, we were sitting on the floor right beneath the stage
111. and a little salacious tidbit
112. is that she was taking her t-shirt and opening it
113. so that the people below could look up.
114. And of course she wasn't wearing a bra.
115. so talk about titillation I mean you know that's just one part of the of the you know charisma of
116. Patti Smith is that she used her sexuality you know and then one minute she's showing us her
117. breasts and the next minute she's spitting on the floor and and cursing God and you know all the
118. rest so yeah it was a revelation and so you came to New York and did you realize that the time
119. that it was a very women-friendly scene
120. or at least women heavily populated scene?
121. I mean, almost immediately.
122. I remember getting there and meeting Lydia Lunch,
123. which was one of my first friends in New York,
124. and going to Max's Kansas City and CBGB's
125. and seeing bands like Mars and DNA.
126. And there were women in all of these bands.
127. And being in an audience with Kathy Acker
128. sitting on one side and Anya Phillips on the other.
129. and Jenny Holzer in the background.
130. And everybody was in this scene going to the same shows going to the same events And it was it was kind of astounding I remember Vivian Dick writing something about that because she had come from Ireland which was still very patriarchal in the late 70s and 77
131. And she said she couldn't believe that all these incredibly androgynous, wonderful women were running around and not looking for husbands.
132. which was the Irish way at the time. You know, I don't think Ireland even had legal divorce until
133. the late 70s or early 80s. So yeah, it was phenomenal. It was really kind of groundbreaking
134. what was going on. And you were also writing, right, this whole time. And you've always done
135. both, which is that also because of Patty or did Patty just promote? Well, I always, you know,
136. I was always a writer. When I was a child, I had my work destroyed a couple of times and also in
137. New York, which was really hard to get over. So I was a closet writer and couldn't really come out
138. with anything until I, you know, I was quite older. I don't think I, I haven't published until I was
139. in my 60s, but there was a stew brewing inside that. So of course, like within a six year period,
140. I'm like books, books, books. I'm just publishing books like crazy. And I love it. I love it.
141. You know, Patti Smith was talking about how like, you know, Virginia Woolf said you need a room of one's own and that we also need a room of one's own in our head.
142. And as much as I miss music, I also love solitude.
143. And I and I love, you know, being alone with my work and walking around my living room talking sentences out loud to see if they're going to work.
144. But I do miss the collaboration of music.
145. It's hard, though, right now.
146. I mean, we were making more money in the contortions playing little clubs like Max's Kansas City and CBGB's back in 1978 than you can make if you're not a famous musician in a club like Zebulon today.
147. I mean, it's crazy because the clubs just don't.
148. You know, it was a that's another aspect of the scene that was really important is economically we could live for like nothing.
149. You could get an apartment for 75 bucks a month and maybe work one day at a coffee shop and play out a couple of times a month.
150. And you were good. You were good to go.
151. And so I wonder about young people today and how they can afford to be artists if they're forced into corporate jobs to make a living, to be able to pay the incredible cost of living in America right now.
152. Because seeing is very important to art.
153. Absolutely.
154. I do think, I mean, as a professor of college students at
155. Royal Mary Mountain University, I do see them wanting to create their own things more and
156. realizing that, of course, the jobs aren't out there.
157. And so that they do have to do it themselves, which is, you know, the punk ethos of No Wave.
158. It's the punk ethos of Roy Akro.
159. It's the punk ethos, right?
160. And it's the feminism ethos too.
161. That's what I've always, why I've always thought there's, you know, the punk feminist connection, right?
162. Is it's a kind of individual empowerment and connecting and relationship.
163. Yeah.
164. How did you do the research for this book?
165. I mean, obviously you lived it.
166. Did you have journals?
167. Did you talk to people?
168. Like, how do you, how did you remember?
169. all these things. Because as you talk about in the book, you also maybe did some things that
170. might have clouded memories. That's true. Very true. Well, you know, I did have a couple of
171. people that I would talk to about, like, for instance, all the contortions shows and where
172. we played and the personnel that, you know, would change. I had a friend in New York who is like,
173. he's an aficionado of the contortions. He knows every gig and every person that ever played.
174. So, you know, I would talk to him and I didn't do too many interviews.
175. Like I talked to Pat Place.
176. She helped me out with, you know, filling in some holes.
177. But for the most part, you know, I think when you're writing memoir, you seize on a memory
178. and then you extemporate on it to make it into a story that has to do with your emotional
179. makeup at the time and how you feel about it in retrospect, you know.
180. So if there were details that I didn't remember, I would paint it like Maison Seine so that people could come into the story.
181. And, you know, I didn't make anything up in particular, but I did, you know, I colored stories so that they were compelling enough for people to read.
182. Did you get in touch with people from that era that maybe you hadn't been in touch with for a while?
183. Or has the book, you know, since, have you heard from people?
184. I haven't really, there were a few people that I spoke to that I hadn't spoken to in a long time, like Marina, who played bass in the Bloods for like, you know, a very short, short tour of Holland.
185. Right, which is, this is part of how, like, I knew about you is that one of my best friends in New York had briefly been in the Bloods and had told me all about the Bloods.
186. And, you know, the Bloods were the first lesbian band, right, in rock and roll.
187. And, I mean, certainly there were other bands that had lesbians and maybe were all lesbian, but that was really, we were very public about it.
188. You know, hence, no record company wanted to touch us with a barge pole because it was 19, you know, 1980.
189. It was basically our heyday.
190. But, you know, that's another story that's never been told.
191. And a lot of women have written about punk and the punk scene.
192. And there's been quite a few books that have been coming out.
193. No one wrote about the Bloods.
194. And Anne Magnusson had mentioned the Bloods to, I can't remember her name.
195. Yeah, I'm not quite sure what the name of the book was.
196. Anyway, so I'll keep going.
197. But, you know, people have not written about the Bloods because it's as if we didn't exist.
198. and we were a pretty damn good band.
199. I mean, there's a few clips on YouTube
200. of us playing the Venus Weltklang Festival in Berlin,
201. which was all women's bands.
202. It was the, you know, the Au Pairs, the Slits,
203. Delta Five, Nina Hagen.
204. It was a pretty amazing festival of women musicians.
205. And I think we played our best show there in Berlin.
206. But again, there was so much homophobia directed at us.
207. And there were problems.
208. There were drugs.
209. There were ego problems.
210. All the things that hit most rock and roll bands.
211. And we really couldn sustain it which was unfortunate because there weren really many women all women bands or certainly all queer women bands at that time I did have that cassette tape that I gave you That Marina gave me Yeah That would be another great documentary about that Berlin festival Well they filmed it
212. And there was a guy who wanted to put it out in Germany, but he wanted basically to do it for
213. free. So of course, we didn't want to. We didn't want our music. We didn't want to give everything
214. away for like no compensation so we didn't end up but the the footage exists that would be amazing
215. to see it well you too you too um were there certain people that you revisited in this book
216. women in particular that maybe aren't with us anymore or that you felt needed a light shine
217. on them as you do with the Bloods. I do think that you do tell Bloods' story. That's really
218. important. Were there other women? And, you know, I mean, Kathy Acker, I know you
219. were very close to her and I don't know if you can talk about what you're doing with that yet.
220. Lizzie Mercier de Kloop was a really close friend of mine who was an absolute genius.
221. She played the guitar in such an inimitable way. I mean, you would think that she was born in a
222. Dusty, Ali, and Soweto.
223. Like her sense of rhythm was profound.
224. And like her whole image and everything about her was so exciting.
225. You know, she really was inimitable.
226. And I don't think people understand or know her story enough either.
227. And so if I could bring more attention to her music from the book, I would love that to happen.
228. she deserves so much more than what she you know was able to to uh receive in her lifetime and she
229. died very young right right and then there was a retrospective that came out not that but that long
230. ago so the music is out there but yeah yeah and there's also honey who was in born in flames who
231. died young and so you know the i kind of commune with ghosts you know i want them to speak things
232. through me that they have not, that they did not have the opportunity to say. So I have so much
233. compassion for their lives and for their, the fact that they died young, sometimes due to,
234. you know, alcoholism or drugs or, and it was really hard for some women to be themselves
235. in an industry where men were controlling everything and taking their money. And like
236. in Lizzie's case allegedly her manager really stole most of her royalties and her money so she
237. was quite impoverished towards the end of her life people did help her out but do that in the
238. music industry that's so hard to do isn't it yeah
239. so you have a couple of events coming up in the LA area where you're gonna
240. to talk more about the book.
241. We're doing one in San Pedro on June 27th at the Den,
242. which is a wonderful little store.
243. So if people didn't get enough of hearing us,
244. talk to each other and come to the Den at 3 o'clock.
245. But this coming Sunday.
246. On the 19th.
247. No, Friday the 19th.
248. Yeah, my friend Zoe Hansen and I,
249. Zoe wrote a book called Going Down in Gotham,
250. And she was a madam in New York during the 80s.
251. And she writes about sex work and drug.
252. Like it so funny and wonderfully honest and raw So we going to be doing readings together on the 19th Friday night at The Loved One which is a new space that Hat and Beard opened up
253. It's a bookshop and an event space.
254. Very exciting.
255. I think it's going to turn into a really important literary hub here in Los Angeles.
256. So that'll be fun.
257. You know, 730, Friday night.
258. Come on out.
259. Yeah.
260. Loved One is a great space.
261. I did the conversation with Vivian Goldman there.
262. Also, I think Vivian wrote the liner notes for the Lizzie Mercier.
263. She did.
264. Yeah.
265. Yeah.
266. The retrospective.
267. Yeah.
268. And sometimes I feel like you and Vivian have like flipped your careers.
269. Like she was the journalist and now she's become a musician.
270. You're the musician.
271. Yeah.
272. The writer.
273. Well, I still wear a lot of hats, but, you know,
274. Sometimes people don't look on that very kindly.
275. But, you know, who cares?
276. Patty did it. Patty does it.
277. She wears all kinds of clothes.
278. And you're also, you're not only writing memoirs, right?
279. You wrote the Why Labelle Matters book about.
280. And Universal Mother about Sinead O'Connor's book.
281. And my next book is a biography of Sinead O'Connor for Beacon Press.
282. So I'm really excited about that.
283. I'll probably be spending a lot of time in Ireland next year doing research on that.
284. Yeah. And that's just, again, so important to have women's stories told. I mean, she did tell
285. her story. There is a lot about her, but you know, people tell their stories, part of their
286. stories. They don't always tell their story. And to hear that from you, I mean, Universal Mother
287. was wonderful. It was one of the 33 and a third books about single albums, right? But I did a
288. whole biography. I'm excited about it. There's a lot of parallels in our two lives. So it'll be
289. an interesting journey for sure. Is there anything else that you're working on that we should know?
290. I mean, you've also, well, you can't say right now. I'm going to wait till a little later in the year
291. for that one, but that's a big one that I'm very excited about, but you know, stay tuned. Maybe
292. we'll do another show with Lynn about that one. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for supporting us, Lynn.
293. We love having you both on Feminist Magazine. And I love just sitting and hearing these stories,
294. because you both have so much knowledge, and you're just like bouncing off of each other.
295. It's one of my favorite ways to do a segment for the show. I just want to remind people then that
296. you've got the two events coming up. You've got an event in Echo Park on June 19th, and then
297. Adele and Evelyn will be in conversation June 27th in San Pedro. So we'll make sure to put links to
298. that on our website and on our socials as well so that folks can get themselves over to one of
299. those two events. Any last thoughts before we have to go? Just break on through to the other side.
300. There's always another door to break through. And we have a lot of doors that have been slammed in
301. our faces lately. I don't know if you saw the thing last night that Patti Smith did for the
302. Rise Up and Sing Out event at Town Hall. And she, of course, she sang People of the Power.
303. And she always ends it saying, you know, use your voice, but because of the benefit for the First Amendment, she ended it with we the people, which I thought was really powerful.
304. What a great sentiment to end an event like that this moment in time that we in Definitely This is even more of a moment to be using our voices all over again
305. Well, we have been hearing from author Adele Bertet, author of the new book, No New York,
306. A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene.
307. and she's been in conversation with journalist and professor Evelyn McDonald.
308. Thank you both for joining us on Feminist Magazine.
309. This has been an amazing conversation.
310. Thank you.
311. Thanks, Evelyn.
312. Thanks, Adele.
313. It takes me through the heartlands in our new Chevrolet
314. And tells me how it feels to be inside me
315. She says, be an angel
316. And you can be the devil too
317. Fall in love with one world
318. Fall in love with the boy inside the girl
319. Roadside station New Mexico
320. Trying to find some music on the radio
321. The headlights flash as we are riding
322. Miles and miles of sand and sky
323. Reflected in my Johnny's eyes are shining
324. As we are riding and riding, riding
325. Johnny Belinda
326. We feel spirit inside the river
327. Ready for a sonic journey around the world and around the block?
328. Welcome to Global Village on KPFK 90.7 FM.
329. Every weekday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., we bring the planet's pulse straight to your speakers.
330. From Afrobeat to High Life.
331. To Cuban Song.
332. To old favorites from the block.
333. The Global Village is your daily passport to international sounds and more.
334. Tune in on your radio at 90.7 FM Los Angeles or stream us live globally at kpfk.org.
335. Explore the world one track at a time.
336. You're listening to Feminist Magazine on KPFK on 90.7 FM and kpfk.org.
337. I'm your host today, Lynn Harris-Ballon.
338. And now, Juneteenth to Reparations, the freedom of unfinished resolve.
339. When peace come, they read the emancipation law to the colored people.
340. They, the freed slaves, spent that night singing and shouting.
341. They wasn't slaves no more.
342. That's former slave Pierce Harper talking in 1937 and recalling what happened in 1865 when the slaves in Texas learned that they had been freed, emancipated two and a half years earlier.
343. by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
344. So certainly the singing and the shouting and the celebrating of those slaves happened quite late.
345. Juneteenth, also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day,
346. is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
347. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th,
348. Major General Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas, to inform a reluctant community that President Abraham Lincoln, two years earlier, had abolished slavery in the U.S. and to comply with his directive immediately.
349. I'm Anita Johnson, and this is From Juneteenth to Reparations, the Freedom Promise of Unfinished Resolve on Making Contact.
350. And this show will trace the history of Juneteenth from the late 19th century Friedman colonies and settlement celebrations.
351. Presented by Dr. Jeanette Garrett-Scott, a historian of gender, race and capitalism, she shares a history of the African-American narrative that's rarely explored.
352. The end of the Civil War did not immediately come to Texas.
353. I mean, it was June 2nd, 1865, before the Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith finally surrendered to Union forces in Galveston.
354. So slaveholders in Texas really refused to acknowledge that the war was over and they refused to give up their slaves.
355. Now, holding on to such a fantasy, I know you're probably thinking, how could they continue to do this?
356. But it really wasn't as hard as you as you would think.
357. That's because Texas was really kind of insulated during the Civil War because of the Confederate blockade.
358. There weren't that many battles that happened in Texas.
359. So the Texas was really shielded from the brunt of the Civil War.
360. In fact, slaveholders, especially those in Mississippi and Louisiana, would bring their slaves to Texas to hide them from the oncoming Union lines.
361. So at the end of the Civil War, there were untold, you know, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of slaves that were added to the 180,000 slaves that were already living here in Texas.
362. So Union Brigadier General Gordon Granger, and that's his picture there at the bottom, arrived with about 1,800 Union troops at Galveston in mid-July.
363. Don't really know the exact date, but on June 19th, Granger made news of freedom official.
364. He stepped onto the balcony of Ashton Villa, which was the former headquarters of the Army of the Confederate States of America, and he read General Orders No. 3.
365. And this order informed the slaves that the war was over and that they had been freed by Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation two and one-half years earlier.
366. Now, the reactions of these newly emancipated slaves was mixed.
367. I mean, you had some people who stood in utter disbelief.
368. People shouted prayers to God, but most sang and danced right there in the streets.
369. So I want to take a moment really to correct some misconceptions about emancipation.
370. Now, it is true that Texas slaveholders and confederates had suppressed news of the Emancipation Proclamation that went into effect in 1863.
371. But the truth is really that the Emancipation Proclamation really didn free that many slaves It didn free the vast majority of slaves First of all it didn even apply to the slaves in the border states
372. that stayed loyal to the Union. And then, of course, the USA could no more dictate,
373. you know, what the Confederate States of America did with its citizens than Jefferson Davis could
374. command Lincoln to leave the, quote, peaceful and contented slaves alone, lest he incite them to a
375. general assassination of their masters, end quote. But more important than all that, the slaves did
376. not wait around for a proclamation or a piece of paper to say that they were free. Between half a
377. million to 800,000 of the three and a half million slaves, they ran away during the Civil War.
378. They freed themselves. They did not need a piece of paper or someone coming to tell them.
379. What many African Americans have come to know that this war was a war of freedom and
380. emancipation, that it was about slavery. Now, these runaways, they ran to the north, but many of them
381. ran to the Union lines right there in the South's backyard. And many of them set up camps,
382. and they started free communities. And those who didn't run were already shifting, you know,
383. the power dynamics on the plantations and the farms throughout the South, including Texas.
384. So therefore, Africans were already forging these new visions of freedom and citizenship
385. long before General Gordon stepped onto the balcony.
386. Now, I don't want to leave you with the impression that Juneteenth is not important.
387. It is because with that announcement, it was only then that Texans were forced to finally
388. acknowledge that African-American men, women and children were now free and that they were
389. no longer property.
390. And the word spread quickly.
391. Some people stayed put, others left immediately.
392. They wanted to get away from their masters.
393. Many wanted to find family members who had been sold away.
394. Some people went north.
395. Some people even left the country.
396. So June 19th became Afro-Texans' new Emancipation Day, or Jubilee Day, as it was often called.
397. Now, the first Jubilee Day celebrations took place, of course, right under that Ashton Villa balcony.
398. The first official celebrations began in 1866.
399. And from the very beginning, the black church, which was the most important independent institution in the African-American community, was really central to those celebrations.
400. And in the 1860s at Peyton Colony, which was a freedom colony in Blanco County, the Baptist church there held a special Juneteenth service.
401. And then the children marched in a circle from the church to the school to the cemetery and then back to the church and kind of a symbolic reuniting of the free living with the deceased and unfree ancestors.
402. They even had fireworks.
403. So they created these by cutting holes in trees and they filled them with gunpowder and set them on fire.
404. So by 1870 in Texas, there were nearly 50 freedom colonies or these settlements of emancipated African-Americans.
405. And there were hundreds of them but 50 of them were located near Comanche Crossing in Limestone County And the largest and most popular Juneteenth celebrations occurred right there So African Americans also celebrated in
406. communities in Texas cities, and Austin and Houston especially were very popular. They even
407. purchased land to create these emancipation parks to hold their Jubilee Day celebrations.
408. Now, there are not a lot of scholarly sources on Juneteenth, but a few people who talk about it mention that they start using the term Juneteenth instead of Jubilee Day after 1900.
409. But in my research, I've actually found that it was in the early 1890s, as early as 1891, that African Americans in their communities were calling Jubilee Day Juneteenth.
410. And Juneteenth, of course, it's obvious, it's just June and 19th where they cut out the nine and they squeeze the June and the 10th together.
411. So by the early 1900s, Juneteenth celebrations had spread from Texas to southeast Oklahoma, to southwest Arkansas, and parts of Louisiana.
412. And they rivaled Independence Day celebrations.
413. Now, to people looking on the outside, they probably saw these people celebrating and eating and playing games, and they thought of them as these kind of just jubilant celebrations that took place on one day a year.
414. But during these celebrations, especially in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, blacks were talking about their political rights.
415. They even had politicians, people running for local governments and state governments, come to the Juneteenth celebrations and picnics and stomp to get the African-American vote.
416. They encouraged blacks in attendance to register to vote because freedom included the right to vote.
417. And that right was slowly being taken away during the last decades of the 1800s.
418. And, of course, it was completely compromised by the early 1900s.
419. Now, Juneteenth can really teach us not just about the past, but it's also important in our more recent history, society and politics and culture.
420. So if we just look at it inside American history, instead of something that happens parallel to or outside of U.S. history, then we get a deeper meaning out of what some would consider a hidden history.
421. For example, in the late 19-teens to the 1930s, those large-scale community-wide Juneteenth celebrations actually became less frequent.
422. So people continue to celebrate, you know, in their homes and in their churches and in their communities.
423. But those really big countywide celebrations like the ones at Comanche Crossing really became almost non-existent.
424. And so I had to ask myself, well, you know, why is that?
425. So I thought, you know, about looking at the period, what was going on in America at the time.
426. So by World War I, the late 19-teens, segregation laws firmly in place.
427. There was this tide of nativism that was engulfing the country.
428. And so for anyone who doesn't quite remember what nativism means, that means there was this rejection of outsiders, this fear of foreigners.
429. So I think that combining segregation, racial discrimination, with the xenophobia and nativism,
430. led many whites and even many blacks, African-Americans, to see Juneteenth as un-American
431. because it focused on this dark period in American history It was precisely at the time that the United States was trying to show itself as this global power you know on the world stage
432. And so, ironically, therefore, Juneteenth was considered unpatriotic.
433. That celebrating it showed that you were disloyal to the United States.
434. And that time, not only did it commemorate this really dark period,
435. But those were also some dark days at that time because this was during the Red Summer, which was a wave of deadly lynchings and race riots that occurred in the United States from 1919 to 1921.
436. But, you know, Juneteenth is a spirit of freedom and it refuses to just die.
437. So there's this renaissance that comes in Juneteenth that occurs shortly before the United States goes to World War Two.
438. And the really important catalyst for this renaissance happens in Dallas, Texas.
439. So you have Antonio Macio Smith.
440. He's an educator and he's head of the Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce.
441. And he's trying to lead efforts to create this commemoration or an exhibit of African-American life and culture for the Texas sesquicentennial in 1936.
442. 1936. Well, the state fair organizers refuse. And so Smith does not give up. So he goes over their
443. heads to the federal government and he actually secures a $100,000 grant. And he uses that money
444. to build the Hall of Negro Life on the state fairgrounds. Now, local white leaders protested
445. the construction of the hall, but there was nothing that they could do. It was completed
446. and it was dedicated on Juneteenth, 1936. And so over 46,000 African Americans streamed into the
447. state fair grounds for the largest Juneteenth celebration ever held up to that time. Now,
448. the hall, unfortunately, was demolished soon after the fair closed, but that rekindled spirit,
449. they could not destroy that
450. and so then it was after 1936
451. that the Juneteenth celebration
452. was revived in these
453. more public commemorations
454. that's because African Americans
455. now were emboldened
456. because of their success during the
457. centennial and also this was
458. in the 40s you had World War II
459. and African Americans
460. were fighting for what they called a double
461. victory so there was a victory
462. over fascism
463. abroad and a victory over racism at home. And so these Juneteenth celebrations in the 40s and the
464. 50s really rekindled this idea of equal rights. They would also honor former slaves and African
465. American veterans. Now during the civil rights movement that really started to kick off in the
466. mid-1950s through the 1960s, many blacks really were more conscious, you know, about drawing the
467. connections between their present day movement and their ancestors' historical struggles for
468. freedom and for equal rights. So in debate and reactions surrounding the Civil Rights Act,
469. many made the explicit connection between that act and fulfilling the freedoms that were first
470. guaranteed in the Emancipation Proclamation and that the Juneteenth, you know, general orders
471. show this deferred freedom.
472. So President John F. Kennedy mentioned
473. the Emancipation Proclamation
474. in a speech calling for
475. federal civil rights legislation. And after his assassination, LBJ pushed through the bill
476. and one of his aides told him, quote, it's equivalent to signing an emancipation proclamation,
477. end quote. So the deferred freedom that was celebrated during Juneteenth speaks to this
478. struggle for equality and rights that continued through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of
479. 1964. And the activists in the 1960s clearly made those connections to Juneteenth.
480. The organizers of the 1968 Four Peoples March held a Solidarity Day rally, and they held it on Juneteenth, 1968.
481. And African Americans attended from all over the country, and so after they returned home, they either revived or they initiated Juneteenth celebrations in their hometowns around the United States.
482. You're listening to From Juneteenth to Reparations, the freedom promise of unfinished resolve on making contact.
483. Coming up, we'll expand our conversation of Juneteenth to include a case for reparations.
484. Next, we'll hear from attorney Fania Davis as she explores reasons for the U.S. government to reckon with and compensate for centuries of stolen labor and legal oppression.
485. Fania Davis was one among a panel of scholar activists who described some of the experiences under which black people lived during and after slavery and recounted examples of what reparations could look like.
486. Monica Lopez brings us these excerpts from a panel recorded at Mills College in Oakland, California.
487. Fania Davis worked for 30 years as a civil rights trial lawyer and later in the field of restorative justice with youth in the schools and in the juvenile justice system.
488. That work arose from my origin story, having been born in Birmingham, Alabama, which we called Bombingham, Alabama, during the height of segregation and the height of the movement resisting it.
489. I was born on Dynamite Hill.
490. That was my neighborhood.
491. Homes were bombed in our neighborhood because black families moved in, pushing the color line.
492. So that experience growing up in apartheid and going to stores where we couldn't be served and being called derogatory names and being insulted every day and being exposed every day to the pervasive social messaging that black people were subhuman.
493. in addition to the racial terror is what set me on this path of being in many ways a warrior for social justice.
494. And in later life, after so much fighting and anger, both as a trial lawyer and as a street activist,
495. I had some experiences which made clear to me that I needed to bring healing energies into my life,
496. and that was my attraction to restorative justice, which is based on indigenous healing and peacemaking.
497. Slavery existed as an institution in the United States for nearly two and a half centuries.
498. When former slaves were finally emancipated, Jim Crow laws ensured that the segregation
499. and unequal treatment of African Americans would continue for about another century
500. until 1964 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
501. Over the years there have been symbolic gestures and some tangible offers of redress In 2008 the U Congress offered an apology to African Americans for slavery and Jim Crow First I just want to say it exactly 400 years
502. since the first African captives were kidnapped and brought to this land.
503. And I just want to speak that and name that 400 years.
504. And the reparations movement, quiet as it's kept,
505. has been going on for about that long,
506. and finally gaining a little traction after 400, after all those years.
507. So the apology in 2008, important.
508. However, in the restorative justice movement, we say it's not just about saying sorry,
509. it's about doing sorry.
510. I remember one of the elevator women during the Kavanaugh hearings said
511. that she had serious concerns about Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice
512. because for her, justice was recognizing that pain had been caused,
513. taking responsibility for the pain that was caused,
514. and number three, working to repair the harm, the pain that was caused.
515. The first actual reparation effort that's recorded was by an African-American woman
516. who was freed after her slave master left the country.
517. He was Isaac Royal.
518. In fact, he was one of the main founders or patrons of Harvard University.
519. Isaac Royal was a royalist.
520. So when the war was lost and the Americans won and the British lost,
521. he fled to the Caribbean.
522. And one of his slaves, Belinda, proffered a petition claiming that she was entitled to reparation for the many, many years of labor, and she won.
523. And then after that, there were Quakers who insisted that the Quakers could not own slaves,
524. and they needed to free them if they did own them, and give them reparations.
525. and then you had General Sherman after 1865, after Emancipation Proclamation,
526. there was a field order number 15 that said that the government would give newly freed slaves 40 acres
527. and then later a mule.
528. And some African Americans did actually receive that, but very, very short-lived.
529. As soon as Andrew Johnson came, who succeeded President Lincoln, the special order was repealed.
530. One I forgot that just occurred.
531. Georgetown students voted that they would pay reparations to the 272 descendants of the slaves who were sold to keep Georgetown from going bankrupt.
532. There was a commission that was formed to study Georgetown's complicity with slavery.
533. That was a couple of years ago.
534. They identified as a result of this research 272 descendants.
535. And they've already started to offer legacy admissions to descendants of the 272.
536. I think some descendants want a truth and reconciliation fund, but the students, you know, just didn't really, this is historic what they've done.
537. And, you know, there's the Chicago Torture Reparations Fund, where the government, I don't know exactly how much, but more than $5 million, I think considerably more, I'm not sure.
538. to survivors of black families who were tortured and brutalized and terrorized by police And that reparations fund involves creating a trauma center
539. and offering trauma services, job training, income supports, housing.
540. And then in Charlottesville, there is also a reparations fund.
541. It's about $4 million, I believe.
542. But even though it's small, it offers some glimpse into what a macro scale,
543. reparations might look like. There are income supports or checks, but it goes beyond checks.
544. That's not nearly an individual compensation is important, but supports for housing and education
545. and parks and scholarships and supports for youth are part of that Charlottesville reparations fund.
546. There are many ways in which reparations may be made, and Germany, says Fania Davis,
547. offers examples of how that country has made reparations for the Holocaust.
548. Germany, as I said, started with Czechs.
549. Now Germany has done incredible work, especially in the education area.
550. They have completely transformed the curricula to require that the Holocaust be taught not just in history or just in sociology classes,
551. but in music classes, in art classes, in every single course.
552. Every child in a public school in Germany must learn about the Holocaust.
553. And every year, teachers are given continuing education so they can teach more effectively.
554. I think we can definitely learn a lot about that.
555. I saw a U.S. News and World Report front page that said that only 8% of high school students in a study
556. knew that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War.
557. So the first thing that needs to be done in any campaign,
558. a strategy for reparations, is truth-telling.
559. Like I mentioned earlier, universities are starting to do that,
560. and many white individuals,
561. growing numbers of white individuals are starting to do that.
562. That's really, really important.
563. And then, you know, taking responsibility,
564. saying sorry and doing sorry.
565. fundamentally any reparations movement must be anti-capitalist because that's where
566. all of these pervasive human rights violations the genocide the slavery and all of the afterlives
567. of slavery it's the colonization and conquest of peoples of color asia africa latin america
568. that was all ushered in by racial capitalism.
569. And we say racial capitalism.
570. There's no such thing as just plain capitalism.
571. It's racial capitalism because there would be no capitalism without Mississippi.
572. Manchester, yes, England, but there would be no capitalism were it not for cotton.
573. And were it not for all of the conquests in third world countries.
574. And so we've got to figure out how to completely transform our society, our government, our schools, our economic system.
575. That needs to be a bottom-up, participatory, grassroots process.
576. But one of the things that we really can't do, in my view, is to have a process that's dominated by experts, and that's a top-down process.
577. The last thing I'll say on this question is we need a healing component.
578. The trauma resulting from genocide and land theft and forced assimilation and the Indian boarding schools and slavery and convict leasing and lynching until today you know with mass incarceration the school to prison pipeline and the immigration
579. oppression that we're witnessing. And it has really hurt us, all of us.
580. That was Fania Davis, social justice activist, civil rights trial attorney,
581. and restorative justice practitioner,
582. speaking as part of a panel on reparations
583. at Mills College in Oakland, California.
584. She spoke on a panel about the multicultural dimensions of reparations.
585. And we're wrapping up another edition of Feminist Magazine.
586. Don't forget, you can find all the links from our program today on our website,
587. feministmagazine.org.
588. Find us on Facebook or Twitter and sharing behind-the-scenes photos on Instagram.
589. Our programs are archived in the kpfk.org audio archives.
590. You can find our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Google Play.
591. Thanks for listening.
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