Imani Perry has published many books, earned many degrees, traveled to many states within these United States, all to translate and tell the story of the characteristics and developments that happened here and before "here" was here as we know it today. As she says in her book, South to America: A Journey Below The Mason-Dixon To Understand The Soul Of A Nation in reference to the birth of America: "There are so many birth dates: 1492, 1520, 1619, 1776, 1804, 1865, 1954, 1964, 1965."

On Juneteenth 2022, Imani was standing alone on the Bardavon Presents stage in a long black dress with a capped shoulder sleeve, her curly bangs spilling out of her bun and her nails painted a light glossy pink, serving as a focal point as she rubbed her hands together before letting her fingers fly open when she told the audience her story of Juneteenth and what it has meant in her life as a Black woman living in America.

The theater was about a third full with a mixture of older Black women and men, and many more older White women and men who came as a couple or separate. She thanked Poughkeepsie for having her, and let us know she had been here many times to visit friends and family.

Editor’s Note: Grammatically for this first time in this blog, the “W” is capitalized in White because Imani has declared in her book she is doing it, even though it’s not been formally adopted by style guides yet. ALBB has also wanted to capitalize it, and will follow her style.

Imani was at Bardavon to promote her books with a book signing at the end, but she spoke with dedication about Juneteenth, aka Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Black Independence Day. The date of this author talk was June 19, 2022, which also happened to fall on Father’s Day this year. Immediately, Imani connected the two holidays by sharing how her father, an social justice mover, would not let her family celebrate the Independence Day of July 4th. His reasoning, Imani said, was that Independence Day on July 4th established in 1776 was not inclusive of African Americans at that time, as they remained enslaved. As a compromise, her child self asked her father if she could celebrate July 4th in the form of a protest.

Imani went on to share thoughts on how fathers might have felt when they learned about the Emancipation Proclamation. Imani imagined how a the African descended father might feel when he learned he was free, as his thoughts traveled to his children and how they were free. But his children most likely had been taken from him and sold at auction, so he did not know where they were.

Imani also wondered how the father might feel about having the ability to name his own child. She took that moment to expand on the roll of the grandmother in enslaved families; how the grandmother was often at the center of the remaining family because so many different family members were taken out of the group at any given time to be sold.

Imani insisted that Juneteenth was a day of jubilation. That it is celebrated with red food, like red velvet cake and watermelon (also a resistance food for Palestinians). In Beacon, the group Beacon4Black Lives organized a BBQ of jubilation for all community members to attend, making a point to say that it was not a protest this time, but a day of joy. Beacon4Black Lives organized a majority of protest marches down Main Street followed by speaking opportunities at open mikes in 2020.

Back in the Bardavon, Imani, in her cheer for the day of jubilee, did quietly say that Juneteenth was also “a day of rage.” Perhaps she was feeling the words in her book, South To America, where she writes in her Introduction: “A flock of black skimmers might have flown over the slave pens that night. Or rested there, callow jailbirds. How could they know their presence taunted, that the people inside wished they could fly? Or that the nights they were up, bodies rubbed with beef tallow, hair painted to gleaming black, faces scrubbed, had the most terrible foreboding? Sale tomorrow.”

After reading images like these, recalls of history, the sentances helps give meaning to regularly listened to songs, like “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” when sung by Nina Simone, written by Billy Taylor and released in 1967. Particularly this passage that Nina Simone sings resonates with Imani’s detail about wishing to fly:

Well, I wish I could be like a bird in the sky
How sweet it would be if I found I could fly
Oh, I'd soar to the sun and look down at the sea
And then I'd sing 'cause I'd know, yeah
Then I'd sing 'cause I'd know, yeah
Then I'd sing 'cause I'd know
I'd know how it feels
I'd know how it feels to be free, yeah, yeah

Imani suggested why deep belly laughs in the community were so important - to release stress in order to go to sleep and wake up to face another day. Each day had hope. She encouraged us to read the Emancipation Proclamation - it’s very short - to see how it was worded. Abraham Lincoln’s executive order specifies certain states, leaves out others, and recommends African Americans to continue laboring but for “reasonable wages” this time, create no violence “except in self-defense,” while making it very clear that they will be received into the military should they want to pick up arms and serve in several parts of the military. The involvement of Black soldiers helped the Union win the war, as well as battles and wars before and after the Civil War.

Imani concluded her talk, and opened the one-way dialogue up to a Q+A session with the audience. Several hands flew up, and she took questions graciously asked from vulnerable places and provided her responses from her perspective in a non-judgement zone.

About Imani Perry

Imani is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and a faculty associate with the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Jazz Studies.

She is a scholar of law, literary and cultural studies, and an author of creative nonfiction. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center and a BA from Yale College in Literature and American Studies.

Her writing and scholarship primarily focuses on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in response to, and resistance against, the social, political and legal realities of domination in the West. She seeks to understand the processes of retrenchment after moments of social progress, and how freedom dreams are nevertheless sustained.

Her book: Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation (Duke University Press 2018) is a work of critical theory that contends with the formation of modern patriarchy at the dawn of capitalism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the age of conquest, and traces it through to the contemporary hypermedia neoliberal age. Her book More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (NYU Press, 2011) is an examination of contemporary practices of racial inequality that are sustained and extended through a broad matrix of cultural habits despite formal declarations of racial equality.