Dr. Penni Brown Oral History, May 25, 2023

All right, this is Megan Henry with the Humanities Truck. We're here at City Point. It's May 25th, and may I ask your name?

My name is Dr. Penny Brown. My doctorate is in theology.

It is very nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you as well.

And the question I have for you today is what does Juneteenth mean to you?

Juneteenth means freedom. The freedom to exercise who you are. Obtaining the self knowledge of who you are. So many times in life we try to be everything that everyone else say we're supposed to be, as opposed to really digging deep and finding out who we are and who we were meant to be, who we were created to be. With Juneteenth I find myself, the more I study about Juneteenth and how it came about and the people who laid their life down for me to be able to walk freely today, the more I find out about them, the more I want to know about them, the more I want to be like them. It's meaning to make a difference in the world, to love upon people who I don't know, right? Because the people who went and fought, they didn't really know Penny Brown, right? But they fought for the ability for me to be Penny Brown, to be an educated, independent black woman, right? To be able to have a voice, to be able to vote, to do so many things, right? So, to me Juneteenth just simply means freedom. The freedom to pick and choose. You don't have to be labeled and locked into what somebody else think of you. So that's what it means to me.

How did you become involved with this particular group?

Well actually I met Steve Williams who is the president of NJOF, National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, and he was telling me so much about it. Like, I always looked at Juneteenth as just another celebration, right? But not really understanding why we were celebrating. So from talking with him and then I got involved with the education group within JOF and I started doing some additional research myself. That's when I also came in contact with Carl Adams who, you know, did the Nance story. And so it just was the more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. It gave me a thirst and a hunger, so.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.