Monday marked Juneteenth which honors the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned they were free. This came almost two and half years after Abraham Lincoln had signed the emancipation proclamation.

One of the events commemorating the holiday was the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture’s annual literary festival. It took place this past weekend and two of the authors from the event joined us in the studio.

Robert Jones Jr. wrote the book, “The Prophets,” which explores love between two enslaved young men in Mississippi, and Magogodi oaMphela Makhene wrote “Innards” which celebrates Soweta, South Africa and encourage readers to think about Blackness outside the white gaze.

Makhene says that Juneteenth celebrations feel like a “way to pay homage to the people who have made it possible, especially for immigrants, to be here like myself.”

Jones Jr. shared that he was named after the first enslaved person in his family. As a tribute to him, every first-born boy in the family, “six generations are named Robert.” He thinks about the ways to keep his relative’s memory alive.

Jones Jr. says that “we can’t run away from our past. We must be able to have the courage to learn from it, to examine it, so we don’t make the same mistakes over again."

Mahkene says that not only is it about honoring the lives of their ancestors but also “about the joy of those ancestors, how they found a way to make it through.”

To buy their books, go to Magogodi.com and RobertJonesJr.substack.com.