![\"Jeffrey](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Ogbar160712a070-300x200.jpg\")
\u201cI hardly know any African Americans under 50 years old who didn\u2019t grow up listening to hip-hop,\u201d says Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, UConn history<\/a> professor and founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music<\/a>. \u201cI know folks who are 50 and older who grew up listening to hip-hop and then drifted away from it, but it\u2019s rare to find anyone under my age who\u2019s African American and who did not at some point consider hip-hop their major form of music.\u201d<\/p>\n Ogbar, who\u2019s written and spoken extensively about hip-hop, says he never connected it and Juneteenth, but can see why event organizers would join the two since songs from hip-hop\u2019s early days generally center on messages meant to affirm the human spirit, spread love, and create community.<\/p>\n \u201cI would argue that Kendrick Lamar, in many ways, is a fantastic example of pushing us to imagine a world where there\u2019s the possibility of freedom,\u201d he says. \u201cHe does a very good job and he\u2019s one of the most commercially successful artists of his generation. This is the element of hip-hop that builds on the traditions of freedom, persistence, and an expanded notion of humanity \u2013 everything Juneteenth stands for.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, he acknowledges, there are some commercial artists today whose music carries messages of hate, racism, and misogyny, all in opposition to Black expressive culture and likely the product of someone in pursuit of an audience.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at all of African American music from the late 19th century with ragtime to jazz, blues, R&B, soul, disco, funk, and rock, if you look at everything Black people have created in music, the themes have largely been about love, relationships, and celebrating life,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you think about Earth, Wind, and Fire\u2019s \u2018Dancing in September\u2019 or any of Prince\u2019s songs, they are about love more than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n When hip-hop was created 50 years ago, artists were clear about who their audience was, Ogbar says: the communities from where they came. They weren\u2019t beholden to music labels or radio stations and openly challenged them, even protesting the Grammys in 1989 when they weren\u2019t included in the televised portion of the show.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a particular beauty of hip-hop. That was a style of hip-hop that was very irreverent. Run DMC was defiant to the musical establishment and said, \u2018We go where we want to go on our own terms. We dress how we dress. We say what we say.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last two decades, Ogbar suggests, hip-hop artists have been focused on \u201csatisfying market demands and not on creating art for art\u2019s sake. In that way, I think hip-hop has opened itself up to be ideologically discordant from the community that gave rise to it, because they\u2019re catering to a non-African American community.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless of the change in message and motive, Ogbar says that drawing a connecting line to Juneteenth might just be an innovative way to acknowledge both events happening this summer.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people who are holding these Juneteenth events want an event that appeals to young people and think, \u2018We should have some rappers up there. We should have some hip-hop folks.\u2019 I think it\u2019s a good way to bring in young people, bridge the generational divide, and inform young people about the importance of Juneteenth,\u201d Ogbar says.<\/p>\n Enforcement Took Time<\/strong><\/p>\n Growing up in Los Angeles, where a significant number of African Americans there have ancestors who generations ago moved from Texas, Ogbar says he always celebrated Juneteenth and always was irked by the story that June 19, 1865, was the day that enslaved people in Texas learned the Emancipation Proclamation had been passed on Jan. 1, 1863 \u2013 more than two years later.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a fallacy, he says.<\/p>\n While news wasn\u2019t as instantaneous as it is today, Texans would not have had to wait two years to learn the Civil War had ended. News of a major historical event like that would have been widely disseminated.<\/p>\n Ogbar says that enslaved people in Texas, while most knew about the Emancipation Proclamation, wouldn\u2019t have been able to be free, because Texas belonged to the Confederacy, had its own president, and didn\u2019t recognize President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s authority, including the proclamation.<\/p>\n Small battles continued in the West and pockets of the South weeks after Robert E. Lee\u2019s April 9, 1865, surrender, until the Union was able to create order across the defeated Confederacy. Ogbar says that not all Confederate generals immediately capitulated to federal authority, and not all state governments were eager to go along with edicts coming from Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger\u2019s arrival in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to enforce federal law \u2013 not just to bring news of emancipation, as urban legend contends \u2013 is the true story of Juneteenth.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the less sexy narrative, and even after Granger\u2019s enforcement of federal law, from Texas to Florida and South Carolina, there were pockets of people who continued to experience slavery,\u201d Ogbar says. \u201cIt just took time for enforcement. It wasn\u2019t that people didn\u2019t know, it was about the willingness of the state to impose and enforce a law.\u201d<\/p>\n Besides, the Civil War wasn\u2019t intended to end slavery; it was a battle between the states over secession and the Southern systems built on slavery, Ogbar notes. Only the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that was passed in December 1865 made slavery illegal.<\/p>\n \u201cEven when the war was over, slavery was legal in Kentucky and Delaware,\u201d he says. \u201cFreedom didn\u2019t come easily. This was a protracted war and the abolitionist opposition worked hard. Hopefully as Juneteenth celebrations mature and we dispel urban legends, there\u2019s more celebration of the tenacity of the people who believe in freedom, who believe in the possibilities that many thought to be impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n Resilience of Americans, Elasticity of Democracy<\/strong><\/p>\n For Ogbar, Juneteenth is a day that\u2019s as patriotic as apple pie \u2013 or cherry, depending on the family picnic.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the United States, one could argue there\u2019s a certain elasticity to how we define democracy and freedom. At the inception of the country, the founding fathers did not conceive of a democracy as capacious as we have right now,\u201d Ogbar says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t think their wives should vote, they didn\u2019t think their daughters should vote, let alone the people they enslaved or the people whose land they took.\u201d<\/p>\n But because democracy has stretched and expanded to encapsulate these groups and others, it no longer is exclusive to people like Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, he says: \u201cJuneteenth is a testimony to the elasticity of democracy in the United States. It\u2019s the ability to expand and include more people, and this is something all people should be proud of. I think all people should be proud of America\u2019s capacity to demand and realize democracy, freedom, and civil rights.\u201d<\/p>\n While he stops short of arguing that Juneteenth should be labeled as more patriotic than other American holidays, Ogbar says it undeniably should be among those at the top of the list.<\/p>\n \u201cJuneteenth is a consequence of the resilience of Americans to survive the threat of treason from the Confederacy. The Confederacy literally sought to destroy the United States of America, and in the process over 700,000 Americans were killed,\u201d he says. \u201cIf the United States was destroyed, we wouldn\u2019t have Juneteenth. It\u2019s a day to remember the sacrifice of the people who fought, died, strategized, and protested for the sake of the country. I\u2019m not sure there\u2019s another patriotic freedom of expression as powerful as Juneteenth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first formal observation of the holiday in Connecticut history coincides with celebrations of hip-hop’s golden anniversary <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":200276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2235,2306,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-199963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-voices","category-uconn-edu-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 23:12:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199963"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200290,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199963\/revisions\/200290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/200276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199963"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=199963"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=199963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"People](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/GettyImages-1233550853-1-300x200.jpg\")