06/20/22 06/20/22 [captioning made possible amy: from new york this is democracy now! >> for me, when i think of juneteenth, part of what i think about is the both-endedness of it, that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them, and then at the same time, celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things that this country has ever done. amy: today, a democracy now!

juneteenth special, a federal holiday commemorating the day in 1865 when enslaved people in galveston, texas, belatedly learned of their freedom more than two years after the emancipation prlamation. we will speak to clint smith, author of "how the word is passed: a reckoning with the history of slavery across america." we will also air a speech at the united nations by the pulitzer prize nning journalist nikole hannah jones, the creator of the 1619 project. >> it is time for the nations that engaged in and profited from the transatlantic slave trade to do what is right and what is just. it is time for them to make reparations to the descendants of chattel slavery in the americas. this is our global truth, the truth we as human beings understand with stark clarity. there can be no atonement if there's no repair. amy: and then as harvard university reveals the school's extensive ties to slavery,

we speak with mit historian craig steven wilder, author of "ebony & ivy: race, slaver and the troubled history of america's universities." all that i more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. today, a democracy now! special on this, the newly created juneteenth federal holiday which marks the end of slavery in the united states. the juneteenth commemoration dates back to the last days of the civil war when union soldiers landed in galveston, texas, on june 19, 1865, with news that the war had ended and enslaved people belatedly learned they were freed. it was two-and-a-half years after the emancipation proclamation.

in 2021, president biden signed legislation to make juneteenth the first new federal holiday since dr. martin luther king jr. day was created nearly 40 years ago. on the day after biden signed the legislation making juneteenth a holiday, i spoke to the writer and poet clint smith, author of the book "how the word is passed: a reckoning with the history of slavery across america." i began by asking him about traveling to galveston, texas, and his feelings on juneeteenth becoming a federal holiday. >> as you mentioned, i went to galveston, texas. i've been writing this book for four years and i went two years ago. and it was marking the 40th anniversary of when texas had made juneteenth a state holiday. and it was the al edwards prayer breakfast. the late al edwards, sr. is the state legislator, black state legislator who made possible and advocated for the legislation

that turned juneteenth into a holiday, a state holiday in texas. and so i went, in part, because i wanted to spend time with people who were the actual descendants of those who had been freed by general gordon granger's general order no. 3. and it was a really remarkable moment because i was in this place, on this island, on this land, with people for whom juneteenth was not an abstraction. it was not a performance. it was not merely a symbol. it was part of their traditi. it was part of their lineage. it was an heirloom that had been passed down that had made their lives possible. and so i think i gained a more intimate sense of what that holiday meant. and to sort of broaden, broaden out more generally, you spoke to how iwas more than two-and-a-half years after the emancipation proclamation, and it was an additional two months after general robert e. lee surrendered at appomattox, effectively ending the civil war. so it wasn't only two years after the emancipation proclamation, it was an additional two months

after the civil war was effectively over. and so for me when i think of juneteenth, part of what i think about is the both-endedness of it, that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them, and then at the same time, celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things that this country has ever done. and i think what we're experiencing right now is a sort of marathon of cognitive dissonance in the way that is reflective of the black experience as a whole, because are in a moment where we have the first new federal holiday in over 40 years and a moment that is important to celebrate, the juneteenth, and to celebrate the end of slavery and to have it recognized as a national holiday. and at the same time that that is happening, we have a state-sanctioned effort across state legislatures across the country that is attempting to prevent teachers from teaching the very thing

that helps young people understand the context from which juneteenth emerges. and so i think that we recognize that as a symbol, juneteenth is not -- that it matters, that it is important, but it is clearly not enough. and i think thfact that juneteenth has happened is reflective of a shift in our public consciousness, but also of the work that black texans and black people across this country have done for decades to make this moment possible. amy: and can you explain more what happened in galveston in 1865, and even as you point out, what the emancipation proclamation actually did two-and-a-half years before? >> right. so the emancipation proclamation is often a widely misunderstood document. so it did not sort of wholesale, free the enslaved people throughout the union. it did not free enslaved people in the union. in fact, there were several border states that were part of the union that continued to keep their enslaved laborers, states like kentucky, states like delaware,

states like missouri. and what it did was it was a military edict that was attempting to free enslaved people in confederate territory. but the only way that that edict would be enforced is if union soldiers went and took that territory. and so part of what many enslavers realized -- and realized correctly -- was that texas would be one of the last frontiers that union soldiers would be able to come in and force the emancipation proclamation -- if they ever made it there in the first place because this was two years prior to the end of the civil war. and so you had enslavers from virginia and from north carolina and from all of these states in the upper south who brought their enslaved laborers and and relocated to texas in ways that increed the population of enslaved people in texas by the tens of thousan. and so when gordon granger comes to texas, he is making cle and letting people know that the emancipation proclamation had been enacted in ways that because of the topography of texas

and because of how spread out and rural and far apart from different ecosystems of information many people were, a lot of enslaved people didn't know that the emancipation proclamation had happened. and some didn't even know that general lee had surrendered at appomattox two months prior. and so part of what this is doing is maki clear to the 250,000 enslaved pple in texas that they had actually been granted freedom two-and-a-half years prior and that the war that this was all fought over had ended two months before. amy: during the ceremony to make juneteenth a federal holiday, president biden got down on his knee to greet opal lee, the 94-year-old activist known as the grandmother of juneteenth. this is biden speaking about lee. pres. biden: as a child growing up in texas, she and her family would celebrate juneteenth. on juneteenth 1939, when she was 12 years old, a white mob torched her family home.

but such hate never stopped her, any more than it stopped the vast majority of you i'm looking at from this podium. over the course of decades, she has made it her mission to see that this day came. it was almost a singular mission. she has walked for miles and miles, literally and figuratively, to bring attention to juneteenth to make this day possible. amy: and this is opal lee speaking at harvard school of public health. >> i don't want people to think juneteenth is just one day. there is too much educional components. we have too much to do. i even advate that we do juneteenth, that we celebrate frdom from the 19th of june to the fourth of july, because we weren't free on the fourth of july, 1776. that would be lebrating freedom, do you understand, if we were able to do that.

amy: and that is opal lee, considered the grandmother of juneteenth. and, clint, one of the things you do in your book is you introduce us to grassroots activists. this doesn't come from the top. this comes from years of organizing, as you point out, in galveston itself and with people like -- not that there's anyone like -- opal lee. >> yeah, no, absolutely. part of what this book is doing, it is an attempt to uplift the stories of people who don't often get the attention that they deserve in how they shape the historical record. so that means the public historians who work at these historical sites and plantations. that means the museum curators. that means the activists and the organizers, people like take 'em down nola in new orleans, who pushed the city council and the mayor to make possible the fact that in 2017 these statues would come down, several confederate statues in my hometown, in new orleans. and part of -- when i think about someone like

miss opal lee, part of what i think about is our proximity to this period of history, right? slavery existed for 250 years in this country, d it's only not existed for 150. and, you know, the way that i was taught about slavery growing up in elementary school, we were made to feel as if it was something that happened in the jurassic age, that it s the flintstones, the dinosaurs, and slavery -- almost as if they all happened at the same time. but the woman who opened the national museum of african american history and culture alongside the obama family in 2016 was the daughter of an enslaved person -- not the granddaughter or the great-granddaughter or the great- great-granddaughter. the daughter of an enslaved person is who opened this museum of the smithsonian in 2016. and so, clearl foso many people, there are people who are alive today who were raised by, who knew, who were in community with, who loved people who were born into intergenerational chattel bondage. and so this history that we tell ourselves was a long time ago wasn't in fact that long ago at all.

and part of what so many activists and grassroots public histoans and organizers ross this country recognize is that if we don't fully understand and account for this history, that actually wasn't that long ago, that in the scope of human history was only just yesterday, then we won't fully understand our contemporary landscape of inequality today. we won't understand how slavery shaped the political, economic and social infrastructure of this country. and when you have a more acute understandg of how slavery shaped the infrastructure of this country, then you're able to more effectively ok around you and see how the reason one community looks one way and another community lookanother way is not because of the people in those communities, but is because of what has been done to those communities generation after generation after generation. and i think that that is central to the sort ofublic pedagy that so many of these activists and organizers who have been attempting to make juneteenth a holiday and bring attention to it as an entry point to think more wholly and honestly about the legacy of slavery have been doing.

amy: during an interview on cnn, democratic congressmember alexandria ocasio-cortez called out the 14 republican congressmembers, all white men, who voted against making juneteenth a federal holiday. >> this is pretty consistent with i think the republican base, and it's -- whether it's trying to fight against teaching basic history around racism and the role of racism in u.s. history to, you know -- there's a direct through line from that to denying juneteenth, the day that is widely recognized and celebrated as a symbolic kind of day to represent the end of slavery in the united states. amy: if you could respond to that, clint smith, and also the fact that on the same day, yesterday, the senate minority leader said they would not be supporting the for the people act? >> yeah, i mean, i think -- amy: the voting rights act. >> absolutely. i think very clearly, the critical race theory --

the idea of it is being used as a bogeyman, and it is being misrepresented and distorted by people who don't even know what critical race theory is, right? so we should be clear that the thing that people are calling critical race theory is just -- that is the language that they are using to talk about the idea of teaching any sort of history that rejects the idea that america is a singularly exceptional place, and that we should not account for the history of harm that has been enacted to create opportunities and intergenerational wealth for millions of people, that has come at the direct expense of millions and millions of other people across generations. and so part of what is happening in these state legislatures across the country with regard to the effort to push backgainst teaching of history -- 1619 project, critical race theory, and the like -- is a recognition that we have developed in this country a more sophisticated understanding, a more sophisticated framework, a more sophisticated public lexicon with which to understand how slavery --

how racism was not just an interpersonal phenomenon, it was a historic one, it was a structural one, it was a systemic one. and i'm very much sympathetic -- i know there's some sentiment out there that people are saying, "well, we didn't ask for juneteenth to become a holiday. we want voting rights. we want police reform. we want abolition. we want" -- and i 100% understand that. i also think that wehould not undervalue what it means for juneteenth to become a holiday, in part because then we are not valuing the work that black activists have done over the course of decades to get there, and because while symbols are not necessarily material change, they are not irrelevant. so i think all the time abt having grown up in new orleans, and to get to school, i had to go down robert e. lee boulevard. to get to the grocery store, i had to go down jefferson davis highway. that my middle school was named after a ader of the confederacy. that the street my parents live on today is named after somebody who owned 115 enslaved people.

the thing is that names and symbols and holidays, like, aren't just names and symbols and symbolism. what they are are reflective of the stories that people tell. and those stories shape the narratives that societies carry. and those narratives shape public policy. and public policy, that shapes the material conditions of people's lives. which is not to say that taking down a statue of robert e. lee or making juneteenth a holiday is going to erase the racial wealth gap. of course not. but what it is is part of an ecosystem of narratives and stories and ideas that can help us recalibrate our understanding of why certain communities look the way that they do and what needs to be done and invested in those communities to create a new set of opportunities. so we should recognize and celebrate that juneteenth is a holiday and we should also recognize that that is not enough -- it is not nearly enough -- and that it is one part of a much longer struggle and a much largestruggle to make sure that we are creating a more equitable and just world. amy: i want you to talk more about your book "how the word is passed: a reckoning with the history of slavery across america."

can you talk about the journey you took? you were just mentioning whe you grew up, in louisiana, the map of the streets of louisiana. and why you feel it is so critical, not only to look at the south, but your chapter on new york is something that people will be -- many will be shocked by the level of -- when people talk about the south and slavery, that new york, of course, had enslaved people? >> it did. it was really important for me to include a chapter on new york city, and a placin the north, more broadly, in part because, you know, while the majority of places i visit are in the south, because the south is where slavery was saturated and where it was most intimately tied the social and economic infrastructure of that society, it most certainlalso existein the north. what a lot of people don't know is that new york city,

for an extended period of time, was the second-largest slave port in the coury after charleston, south carolina. that in 1860, on therink of the civil war when south carolina was about to secede from the union after the election of abraham lincoln, that new york city's mayor fernando wood proposed that new york city should also secede from the union alongside the southern states because new york's financial and political infrastructure were so deeply entangled and tied to the slavocracy of the south. also that the statue of liberty was originally conceived by édouard de laboulaye, a french abolitionist, who conceived of the idea of the statue of liberty and giving it to the united states as a gift, that it was originally conceived as an idea to celebrate the end of the civil war and to celebrate abolition. but over time, that meaning has been -- even through the conception of the statue, right? the original conception of the statue actually had lady liberty breaking shackles,

like a pair of broken shackles on her wrists, to symbolize the end of slavery. and over time, it became very clear that that would not have the sort of wide stream -- or, wide mainstream support of people across the country, obviously this having been just not too long after the end of the civil war, so there were still a lot of fresh wounds. and so they shifted the meaning of the statue to be more about sort of inclusivity, more about the american experience, the american project, the american promise, the promise of democracy, and sort of obfuscated the original meaning to the point where even the design changed. and so they replaced the shackles with a tablet and the torch, and then put the shackles very subtly sort of underneath her robe. and you can -- but the only way you can see them, these broken chains, these broken links, are from a helicopter or from an airplane. and in many ways, i think that that is a microcosm for how we hide the story of slavery across this country, that these chain links are hidden, out of sight,

out of view of most people under the robe of lady liberty and how the story of slavery across this country is very -- as we see now, very intentionally trying to be hidden and kept from so many people, so that we have a fundamentally inconsistentnderstanding of the way that slavery shaped our contemporary society today. amy: in your book, you write that by the early 19th century, the new york financial industry became even more deeply entrenched in chattel slavery. money from new york bankers went on to finance every facet of the slaverade. explain. >> it did. so the banks in new york city were where the planters and the enslavers in the south got their capital. it is how they used -- they used the bodies of enslaved people as collateral for loans that they would take out with insurance companies. i mean, and so, it ivery clear not only that new york city

had enslaved people itself -- right? -- for an extended period of time, as did places in new england, connecticut, rhode island, but that it is the financial and economic infrastructure of new york city and the people who created mass amounts of wealth in that city that allowed slavery to continue to evolve and prosr. and that really made it so that there -- i think we tend to have this sort of bifurcated view and overly simplistic view of, like, "oh, the people in the north were the good guys, and people in the south were the bad guys." but there were a lot of people in the north, and as i talked about, in new york city, who were deeply committed to the perpetuation and existence of slavery in the south, because it was beneficial for them economically, it was beneficial for them politically, it was beneficial for them socially. and it was in line with w they understood the role of enslaved people and black people in this country.

they might not have wanted to have owned enslaved people themselves, but they most certainly did not believe in abolition, or they most certainly did not think that they wanted something to prevent the massive influx of capital that they were receiving from continuing to flow into their hands. amy: clint, before we end, you are an author, you're a writer, you're a teacher, and you are a poet. can you share a poem with us? >> i'd be happy to. and so when you're a poet writing nonfiction, that very much animates the way that i approach the text. and so this is part of the -- this is an adaptation or an excerpt from the end of one of my chapters that originally began as a poem that i wrote when i was trying to think about some of these issues that i brought up. "growing up, the iconography of the confederacy was an ever-present fixture of my daily life. every day on the way to school, i passed a statue of p.g.t. beauregard riding on horseback,

his confederate uniform flung over his shoulder and his military cap pulled far down over his eyes. as a child, i did not know who p.g.t. beauregard was. i did not know he was the man who ordered the first attack that opened the civil war. i did not know he was one of the architects who designed the confederate battle flag. i did not know he led an army predicated on maintaining the institution of slavery. what i knew is that he looked like so many of the other statues that ornamented the edges of this city, these copper garlands of a past that saw truth as something that should be buried underground and silenced by the soil. after the war, the sons and daughters of the confederacy reshaped the contours of treason into something they could name as honorable. we called it the lost cause. and it crept its way into books that attempted to cover up a crime that was still unfolding. that told us that robert e. lee was an honorable man, guilty of nothing but fighting for the state and the people that he loved. that the southern flag was about heritage and remembering those slain fighting

to preserve thr way of life. but see, the thing about the lost cause is that it's only lost if you're not actually looking. the thing about heritage is that it's a word that also means "i'm ignoring what we did to you." i was taught the civil war wasn't about slavery, but i was never taught how the declarations of confederate secession had the promise of human bondage carved into its stone. i was taught the war was about economics, but i was never taught that in 1860 the 4 million enslaved black people were worth more than every bank, factory, and railroad combined. i was taught that the civil war was about states' rights, but i was never taught how the fugitive slave act could care less abt a border and spelled georgia and massachusetts the exact same way. it's easy to look at a flag and call it heritage when you don't see the black bodies buried behind it. it's easy to look at a stue and call it history when you ignore the laws written in its wake. i come from city abounng with statues of white men on pedestals and black children playing beneath them, where we played trumpets and trombones to drown out the dixie song that's still whistled in the wind.

in new orleans, there are over 100 schools, roads, and buildingnamed for confederates and slaveholders. every day black children walk into buildings named after people who never wanted them to be there. every time i would return home, i would dre on streets named for those who would have wanted me in chains. go straight for two miles on robert e. lee, take a left on jefferson davis, make the first right on claiborne. translation -- go straight for two miles on the general who slaughtered hundreds of black soldiers who were trying to surrender, take a left on the president of the confederacy who made the torture of black bodies the cornerstone of his new nation, make the first right on the man who permitted the heads of rebelling slave to be put on stakes and spread across the city in order to prevent the others from getting any ideas. what ne is there for this sort of violence? what do you call it when the road you walk on is named for those who imagined you under a noose? what do you call it when the roof over your head is named after people who would haveanted the bricks to crush you?" amy: clint smith, author of the book

"how the word is passed: a reckoning with the history of slavery across america," speaking on democracy now! in 2021. coming up, nikole hannah-jones on the case for reparations. ■■ [music break] amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, ththe war and peace report.

i'm amy goodman. as we continue our juneteenth special broadcast, we turn now to nikole hannah-jones, the pulitzer prize winning "new york times" journalist who created the 1619 project. in march, nikole hannah jones addressed the united nations general assembly as the u.n. marked the international day of remembrance of the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. >> good morning. it is my deepest honor to speak before you today on this day of international remembrance of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade. i have dedicated my life's work to excavating the modern legacy of transatlantic slavery, and so my thoughts are never far from what has become the defining subject of my journalism, and what i believe continues to be the defining undercurrent of life in the americas -- the legacy of slavery.

i stand before you the great-great-grandchild of enslaved men and women born here in the united states of america, part of the millions who lived and died under the brutal, immoral, and inhumane system of chattel slavery that existed for the first 250 years of the land that would come to think of itself as the freest nation in the history of the world. we gather here to mark the global trade that took some 15 million beloved human beings across the atlantic in the hulls of barbaric ships, the largest forced migration in the history of the world, one that would reshape the entire atlantic world and transform the global economy. we must never forget the scale and the depth of the horrors that people of african descent suffered in the name of profit, profit that enriched the european colonial powers and built the nascent economy of the united states.

we must never forget how the systems of slavery collapsed only to be reborn in other models of violent and racist economic exploitation, such as what we benignly call jim crow in the united states, but what is more aptly called apartheid. but on this solemn day of remembrance, the looking back cannot be and should not be solely defined by african-descended people's enslavement. just as defining, just as important to remembering the legacy of the transatlantic slavery, are the stories of black resistance that would, more than any other force, lead to slavery's collapse in our hemisphere. no people voluntarily submit to their enslavement. and by obscuring the role of black resistance in our collective rememberings of the transatlantic slave trade, we continue to do the work of those who sought to justify slavery

by stripping us of our collective humanity. people of african descent resisted their enslavement from the moment of their capture. they resisted on the long walk from the interior of africa to the coast. they resisted in the castles before being dragged out to the waiting ships. they resisted so frequently on the water that slave ships had to be specially designed to try to prevent mutiny. the ocean became the final resting place of thousands of africans who resisted by choosing a final swim with the ancestors over enslavement in a strange land. as we remember our brutal enslavement by people who believed themselves to be civilized even as they tortured, abused, and murdered other human beings for profit, for sugar for their tea, for molasses for their rum, for cotton to wear, and for tobacco to smoke, we must remember most the fierce

black radical tradition of resistance that did not begin with anti-colonialism efforts on the continent or with civil rights movements in the united states and other places, but with, as the scholar cedric robinson argued, the cimarrones of mexico who ran away to indigenous communities or formed their own fugitive communities known as palenques. we must remember yanga, who led a community of fugitive africans and fought the spaniards so fiercely that they won their status as a free black settlement. we must remember brazil's quilombolas, including palmares, a fugitive black community that would endure for 90 years in the portuguese colony that would import more africans into slavery than anywhere else in the atlantic world. we must remember the maroons of british and french guiana, cuba and the united states, and the "bush negros" of suriname who fought against their oppressors for five decades

as they were attempting to re-enslave them. we must remember the revolts of enslaved people in jamaica in 1690, in new york city in 1712, queen nanny in 1720, the stono rebellion in 1739, and tacky's rebellion in 1760. we must remember the successful uprising of enslaved people -- the most successful uprising of enslaved people -- in the history of the world, thhaitian revolution, where enslaved people rose up and defeated three mighty colonial empires, becoming the first nation in the americas to abolish slavery and establishing the world's first free black republic, an audacity that the western world has punished haiti for ever since. we must remember revolts in barbados in 1816, the baptist war in jamaica in 1831 and nat turner's rebellion that same year in the united states

as black people attempted to make manifest the words of patrick henry, the famed american revolutionary, who proclaimed, "give me liberty or give me death!" -- even as he enslaved african human beings for profit. we must remember freedom fighters such as harriet tubman and frederick douglass and gabriel prosser. we must remember that it was not merely the enlightenment ideas, some reckoning amongst white abolitionists, that brought the end to this system that had enriched colonial powers, but that abolition was propelled by constant revolt that forced colonial powers to realize, as scholar mary reckford, wrote, it would remain "more expensive and dangerous to maintain the old system than to abolish it." black people were actors in their own freedom. obscuring and marginalizing stories of black resistance serves to justify the hypocrisy of colonial europe and the united states by insinuating

that had slavery been so bad, surely, african peoples would have fought harder against it. these are lies of omission that in the absence of truth warp our collective memory. resistance, therefore, must be central to any remembrances of the transatlantic slave trade, and must, therefore, be connected to the ongoing resistance movements in the fight for black liberation across the globe. i stand here before you today, a recipient of that tradition of resistance. my father was born in a little shack in 1945 on a cotton plantation in greenwood, mississippi. he was born into a family of sharecroppers, the violently enforced system of labor exploitation that emerged at the end of slavery. he was born into a strictly apartheid state -- one where black people could not vote, could not use the public library, could not attend schools with white children,

and were lynched for things such as starting a union, walking into a room where a white woman was alone, failing to get off of the sidewalk fast enough in deference to a white person, or the greatest crime of all in the american south -- having the audacity to be a financially prosperous black person. in greenwood in the 1940's, life was so devastating that black children could be put to the fields as early as the age of 3 to start carrying water to workers. so when my father was two years old, my grandmother arlena paul a black woman sharecropper, packed a suitcase and loaded her two young children on a northbound train and escaped the apartheid of the american south. my grandmother had a fourth-grade education and she would spend the rest of her life as a domestic and a janitor -- but that single act of resistance, leaving the racial caste system of the american south

with nothing but the determination that her own children would not pick cotton like she had, like her parents had, like her enslaved grandparents before her had, set in motion the events that would lead me to stand before this distinguished body today, addressing this most esteemed convening, representing all of the nations of the world. hers was an act of resistance that mirrored those of millions of enslaved black people who resisted every day in ways big and small. she, like our ancestors, resisted in order to plant the seed for freedoms and opportunities that she would never see for herself. and it is this history, this understanding, that leads me to argue that the defining story of the african diaspora in the americas is not slavery, but our resistance to it, of people determined to be free in societies that did not believe they had a right to freedom.

we must acknowledge this history as the legacy of slavery can be seen all around us. today the descendants of slavery fight to resist their conditions in the societies that once enslaved them. they suffer the highest rates of poverty, the highest rates of incarceration, the highest rates of death and the highest rates of violence. and the tradition of resistance in protests against police violence and inequality from brazil to cuba to the united states. but we, the people of the african diaspora, should not have to find ourselves still resisting. it is long past time for the european colonial powers, for the united states of america, to live up to their own professed ideas, to become the great and moral nations that they believe themselves to be. it is not enough to simply regret what was done in the past. they are obligated to repair it.

as i stand before representatives of the countries that once enslaved african peoples and the peoples who were once enslaved, as we collectively remember this day, the way for me to honor those who toiled and died and fought is to say this clearly and without flinching -- it is time for the nations that engaged in and profited from the transatlantic slave trade to do what is right and what is just. it is time for them to make reparations to the descendants of chattel slavery in the americas. this is our global truth, the truth we as human beings understand with stark clarity -- there can be no atonement if there is no repair. it is time, it is long past time for reparations for the trans-atlantic slave trade and all the devastation that it has wrought, and all the devastation that it continues to reap. i thank you very much for your attention as we all remember this crime against humanity together.

thank you. amy: nikole hannah-jones, the pulitzer prize winning "new york times" journalist who created the 1619 project. when we come back, we will look at how harvard university has revealed the school's extensive test of slavery. we will speak to mit historian craig steven wilder, author of "ebony & ivy: race, slavery, and the troubled history of america's universities." ■■ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. as we continue our juneteenth special, we turn now to look at harvard university's legacy of slavery. the university recently pledged to spend $100 million to redress the school's deep ties to slavery. the move came after the school issued a 130-page report that revealed at least 41 prominent people connected to the school owned enslaved people. the report states -- "enslaved men and women served harvard presidents and professors and fed and cared for harvard students. moreover, throughout this period and well into the 19th century, the university and its donors benefited from extensive financial ties to slavery." this is an excerpt of a video accompanying the report released by harvard.

>> the evidence of the legacy of slavery at harvard is in the landscape. you can go to the old burial ground and you can see the headstones for two enslaved people. one of them, a girl named cicely, was enslaved to william brattle, who was a tutor, a treasurer, and a fellow at harvard university. >> we also know that several of harvard's presidents who lived in wadsworth house, which is still standing on campus today, owned enslaved people of african origins -- among them, venus, bilhah, and juba. amy: that's an excerpt from the video that accompanies the harvarreport. in this clip, harvard fellow christopher d.e. willoughby tells the story of an african teenage boy who was later dissected and studied by a harvard professor. >> sturmann is a particularly tragic figure. he's only 17 years old.

at the end of about six months to a year of being on display, he takes his own life. he hangs himself. but sturmann's tragedy doesn't end with his death. when sturmann kills himself, they give his body to harvard. >> harvard faculty member jeffries wyman conducted a dissection of sturmann's body. and they also made a set of casts of his body that remains in the harvard peabody museum collections. >> his skeleton is turned into a teaching tool. they say it's left in the care -- i mean, "care," what irony -- of professor louis agassiz. sturmann is measured anput in a linear position anomicallyetween whis angreat apes. so not only is his body ing destyed, he's also being turned in this point of data

to prove his own inferiority. amy: an excerpt from the video made by harvard university as part of a new report documenting the school's deep ties to slavery. "harvard & the legacy of slavery." for more, we turn to mit history professor craig steven wilder, who has long followed this issue and the author of "ebony & ivy: race, slavery, and the troubled history of america's universities." democracy now!'s neeen sheikh and i recently interviewed crg steven wilder. i began by asking him to talk about the significance of harvard's findings. >> i'm happy to be back. and i think it's been a long road. as you point out, it's been basically 20 years since ruth simmons became the president of brown university back in 2003 and media attention turned to the public sort of secret of brown's extensive ties to the slave trade. ruth simmons back then actually commissioned a report

that was eventually published in 2006, the slavery and justice report, that actually laid out brown's extensive ties to slavery and the slave trade and came forward with recommendations. we now sit, as you say, you know, 19, 20 years later, and harvard has come forward with this report. that's been a long journey. but the report actually documents an extraordinarily extensive, deep history between the university and slavery that begins at its founding in 1636. almost immediately, harvard had an enslaved african on its campus, a man who was simply referred to as "the moor" and who was used to serve the students. that man likely arrived in massachusetts on a ship named the desire. it was the first slave ship to leave new england. it was carrying captive enslaved pequot indians into bermuda and the west indies, where they were sold for various goods,

including africans. and so really, harvard's ties to slavery begin with the founding of the institution. and as the report lays out, harvard depended upon slavery and the sle economy, both in new england but also in the soutand the west indies, for virtually all of its history. harvard's history of slavery goes well into the late 19th century. and i would add that after its ties to slavery end -- and they end somewhat involuntarily -- harvard actually then goes to the work of erasing the story of slavery from its past. and so we're really only beginning to reconcile and to really struggle with the deep ties that ts institution has to slavery. nermeen: professor wilder, in addition, of course, to this clear complicity between harvard university and other elituniversities to slavery, there was also the question in the report that was raised about harvard faculty

advancing theories of racial difference and eugecs. could you talk a little bit about that? >> you know, one of the sort of striking findings is that in the 19th century, as race science really comes to dominate the academy -- it's the period when science really comes to take over and the modern university gets established, that part of its modernity is its claim to science, its claim to expertise, its claims to a kind of precision in academic research. and the way that that happens is the scientists really turn themselves over to the slave economy. they become, in fact, the chief defenders of slavery, not just at harvard but at universities across the united states. race science really sort of thrives. louis agassiz, who's mentioned in the beginning of your introducti to this, the harvard race scientist, used enslaved people

on a south carolina plantation for his research. enslaved people were actually us as resech material on colleges and university campuses across the united states. at dartmth, whichas one of the oldest medical schools, one of the college physicians actually uses the dy an ensled man. and much like louis agassi the description that you gave rlier, he takes the body of this enslaved man cato and skins him. he tans the skin of this enslav black man like leather and uses it to dress his instrument case. and then he takes the skeleton of the enslaved black man and strings it together for instructional purposes. the beginning of science at the american college and the american university is, in fact, a story of the violent consumption of living and deceased enslaved people. nermee professor wilder, as you pointed out earlier, the brown university report appeared in 2006,

but it was only in 2019 that the harvard president said that such research should be conducted at harvard. why did it take so long? like, what kind of pressure led to this? >> you know, i always start with ruth simmonat brown because i think as the first african american woman -- the first woman and the first person of color to head an ivy league institution, she did a tremendous service in actually getting this story told. the brown report was a phenomenal document and a transformative moment in the history of higher education. what's sort of really quite sad is that in the aftermath of that report in 2006, brown's peer institutions were largely silent on the question of their ties to slavery. in fact, most of these institions simply pretended that this story was unique to brown alone. and what happened in the intervening years is that undergraduate students, faculty,

graduate students, staff, librarians and archivists at universities and colleges across the united states began doing grassroots work on their institutional ties to slavery. they put up exhibits in libraries. undergraduates did their senior theses on these topics. and that's what kept this story alive. my sense is that what has really actually kept us focused on this is the reseah that thousands and thousands of people have done in courses. for instance, you know, the harvard project began as a course that got virtually no support, really no support at all from the harvard administration. sven beckert taught that harvard and slavery class for years, and the administration largely ignored what was happening in that classroom and didn't want to know what the findings were. that's also true of the courses thategan at lumbia and at princeton and at williams llege. and so really, what's happened over the last decade or so is that students have really not just produced

a lot of the research that we're now actually beginning to wrestle with, but student activism has actually forced institutions to deal with this history. and i would go back -- you know, you can go all the way back to the occupy movement, to the more recent black lives matter movement, and the decisions, for example, that georgetown university students made in 2019 -- in fact, exactly two years ago, to tax themselves, to impose fees on themselves, in order to begin to pay reparations to the enslaved people who were used to both build georgetown and fund its first 50 years of existence, and then who were sold in 1838 from maryland into louisiana. and the profits from that sale were used to pay off the debts of the college. it was the undergraduates who actually restarted the reparations conversation. it was the undergraduates. it was student activism that brought us back to this moment. amy: i wanted to turn to the short film again

that premiered along with the launch of the harvard university report. in this clip, a harvard professor describes how harvard law school was founded. >> in 1736, antigua's plantation owners became fearful that enslaved workers were plotting against them, and they decided to crack down. >> the royall family was involved in putting down this slave uprising -- a lot of head chopping, decapitations, to make people as examples, burning people. >> then isaac royall sr. migrated back to new england to his huge property, several hundred acres of land. he brought enslaved workers from the caribbean to medford to work. eventually, isaac royall jr.

donates lands to harvard university, which the university then lls and uses to endow the first professorship of law at harvard university. >> and some people take that as the founding of the harvard law school. amy: craig steven wilder, this is pretty powerful stuff. what we're talking about here, i mean, it is just a story that some have known in this country, but -- and it certainly goes further than harvard -- but the story of harvard law school and its connection to the caribbean slave trade? if you can explain who the royall family are and the fact you've got this endowed chair, as well, at harvard law school named for them? >> you know, the royall family is a family, as the film points out, that traces back to antigua, an antiguan plantation family in the 18th century.

they were moved to medford, massachusetts, just outside cambridge and boston, later in the century. isaac royall, jr., actually, on that farm, that small plantation, had some 60 enslaved people. and that's the family that eventually actually donates the land that helps to fund and begin the law professorship at harvard. i would point out that this is the story, actually, of professional education broadly. medical schools in the 18th century begin with the dissection and consumption of the bodies of enslaved black people and often native americans. they begin -- the very first medical school inorth america, which is now at the university of pennsylvania, then was the college of philadelphia, begins when the colonial legislature transfers the body of a black person to the scientists so they can do a public dissection and show, in fact, the new medical arts, display them and display the necessity of them.

law schools actually at harvard, at yale, at columbia have very similar origin stories. they're actually tied directly into slery. and law students at harvard and yale and columbia have actually been doing a lot of the research to expose their institutional ties to avery. amy: the new harvard report doesn't mention the university is facing a lawsuit from a descendant of two enslaved people named renty and delia, who were forced to pose in a photograph by a harvard professor in 1850. tamara lanier filed the lawsuit, saying the university is unfairly profiting from their images. in response to the report, lanier tweeted, "stop gaslighting us harvard." she also tweeted -- "if harvard truly embraced the principles in their report the the lanier v. harvard lawsuit would not be necessary." we spoke to tamara lanier in 2019 about her lawsuit. >> last week, my attorneys and i filed a claim against harvard.

i'm asking for the return of my enslaved ancestors' images. and the complaint is more than just a complaint about images. it's a history lesson. and specifically, it points to the exploitation of slaves and how universities like harvard continue to profit. amy: if you can comment on what tamara lanier is calling for and also the recommendations of the report, like working with historically black collegesnd universities, professor wilder? >> sure. i think one of the striking elements of the report is the acknowledgment of the length of harvard's ties to slavery, which, again, i think you can find something very similar for most of our elite educational institutions. harvard's ties to slavery begin, really, with its founding in 1636. but they continue after --

after the end of slavery in massachusetts, roughly 1783. they continue right up until the civil war. what's striking is that even after the civil war, harvard continues to have ties to slavery because slavery still exists in places like cuba and brazil, and universities are actively actually pursuing those unfree economies as sites for profiteering. one of the things i had written in my book is that the -- in the 18th and 19th century, you could actually judge the value or the prominence of a university by its collection of human remains. universities and colleges actively collected human beings and samples of human beings. it was part of the evolution of science, and particularly a part of the evolution of the race science that drove the scientific revolution. and so what's happening currently in this lawsuit

also involves what the report lays out as the thousands of remains of human bngs that are currently held in the harvard museums. thousands. most of those remains are likely of native americans. they've identified i believe 15 that are enslaved africans. one can again go by university by university ansee the way in which, actually, the 19th century and 18th century legacy of race science continues to play out on our campuses, and we literally live with the bodies of enslaved people and the bodies of indigenous people who were consumed in the process of building our institutions. not just in the cemeteries but also in the museums and the libraries, they're there. you know, to come to the recommendations, i think the recommendations include a number of things, including, actually, building on the georgetown example,

establishing relationships to descendant communities, native and of african descent, memorializing and continuing to do research on harvard's ties to slavery and the legacy of slavery at harvard, reaching out to historically black colleges and universities to establish educational partnerships, really creating a legacy of slavery fund, an endowment, the $100 million to fund all of these promises, and then promising some long-term institutional accountability on these questions. amy: m.i.t. professor craig steven wilder, author of "ebony & ivy: race, slavery, and the troubled history of america's universities." and that does it for today's show. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org

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xxk[... ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ hamish macdonald: it's not all pastries and boat trips in the state of denmark. female: don't film me, okay? hamish: okay, don't step in front of a camera. female: don't film me. hamish: there is something rotten going on here. hamish: okay, we'll see you later. rasmus paludan: could you please take the 700,000 muslims from denmark, just take them with you to your neighborhood in australia?