Juneteenth marks the day the last people who were enslaved in Texas learned they were free — 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It’s a celebration of freedom fulfilled. But the truth is, freedom for Black people in America has often been delayed and denied — but always demanded.
That legacy didn’t begin in 1865, and it didn’t end in 2020. Five years ago this summer, after the police murder of George Floyd, millions of people around the world took to the streets in mourning and rebellion. That uprising was part of a continuum of resistance stretching from courtrooms to lunch counters to hashtags.
The timing of this Juneteenth — and this episode — matters. We are still in the wake of that global reckoning.
In this episode of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Apathy Is Not an Option podcast, “When the People Rise,” we trace centuries of defiance, through rebellion, protest, organizing, art and legal strategy.
The blueprint has always been resistance
Black resistance is omnipresent. It shows up in classrooms, protests and online.
“To be an activist … this has to be somebody who intentionally disrupts and resists the status quo,” said educator and author Stefan Bradley. “Somebody who is willing to challenge what’s normal to achieve a modicum of freedom or liberation.”
Bradley reminds us that silence has never kept us safe — and apathy has never set us free.
This fight didn’t start with us — but it’s ours to continue
Juneteenth is part of a much longer history of people who didn’t wait for their freedom. They claimed it and passed down the tools for others to do the same.
“Progress is not always linear,” Bradley said. “Progress requires some imperfect people activating on a righteous cause.”
Culture has always been a weapon
Resistance has always lived in art, from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” to Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance at this year’s Super Bowl. In this episode, advocate and author Brandi Collins-Dexter explains how that power works.
“There are ways in which we can use what we know to challenge the structures and the power brokers that govern our society,” Collins-Dexter said.
She pointed out that when the mainstream media shuts members of the Black community out, they’ve already built the social media tools to educate, organize and resist independently. Black communities have always found ways to speak directly to each other and the world.
The courts are a battleground, too
Legal resistance is as essential as protest. The SPLC’s co-founder Joe Levin reflected on legally addressing the United Klans of America in the 1980s through civil litigation — not with symbolic gestures, but with devastating financial accountability.
“They can be racist, they can be antisemitic,” Levin said. “It’s what they do that’s important. And we showed them if they harm people, there will be consequences.”
This work proves that strategy is resistance. Justice doesn’t wait for permission.
What Juneteenth means now
Juneteenth is not about symbolic freedom. It’s a charge to keep going. As Bradley put it, “You can’t expect to marginalize a group of people … and not expect that group to react sooner or later.”
Listen to “When the People Rise” — streaming now on all major podcast platforms.
Cassandra Douglas is the digital director for the SPLC and executive producer of the SPLC’s “Apathy Is Not an Option” podcast.
Photo illustration at top: (Credit: Hillary Hudson / Jodi Hunt)
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