Welcome to the Tweep Trends Podcast. Hey, Evad, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evad, hey girl! And you are tuned in to Tweep Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Today, let's talk about Juneteenth. Let's get started. We are 10 days out from Juneteenth, and pretty much just about anywhere you turn, you can find some type of advertisement or flyer about activities that are taking place for Juneteenth.
Now, rather, it's a concert, music in the park, a cookout, a program, a something, there's something going on somewhere near you with a decent radius, where if you want to be a part of Juneteenth, you can definitely participate. Now, for those of you that don't know what Juneteenth is, in a nutshell, basically Juneteenth takes place on June 19th, it dates back to 1865 when the last group of enslaved persons found out that they had actually been emancipated years before. This took place in Texas, and I think probably people in Texas have been celebrating it actively, a lot longer than many other places around the country. I feel like Juneteenth has had a recent resurgence.
I don't really know why, but you definitely hear about it a lot more, and it very well could be because of all the struggle and strife that African Americans have been going through and dealing with in recent years, where it's kind of like, you know what, let's kind of get back to basics, and this is a celebration that's been taking place for quite some time. To me, that's what it appears is happening, that people are saying, you know what, let's celebrate these wins that we have, these special days, these times, when something happened for the people, for the culture. Where for some celebrating Juneteenth is brand new. For me, finding out that they had their own flag, well, I was this week years old when I realized what that flag was, and how it all came about was that we were taking a walk in the neighborhood, we walked past this house, and I had a flag out front, and my husband pointed it out, and he was like, hey, do you know what that flag is?
I'm like, no, decoration? He's like, no, that's the Juneteenth flag, and I'm like, you know what, I had no idea that that that was the flag, because to me, in my mind, if somebody said, hey, can you describe what a Juneteenth flag looks like, I probably would have described it to have the colors green, black, or red in it, and although red is in the Juneteenth flag, there's no green and black to be found. So let's kind of go into the history of the flag, and then we'll kind of talk about the elements of the flag as well. So the flag was created back in, wait for it, 1997, well, that right there is mind-boggling, because I'm like, well, wait a minute, so it was created in 97, but it was revised in 2000, but still, that's 22 years ago, and I'm starting to feel really bad that I've never seen this flag before.
So it's been a while since this flag has been in circulation, and it was created by a man by the name of Ben Haeth. He's the founder of the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation, so it only makes sense that he had a hand in actually creating this flag. It went through a number of revisions, and it's brought us to the flag that's present today. So when you look at the flag, there's a white star in the center, and it has a double meaning.
One, it represents the state of Texas, which just happens to be that state that got the last announcement that enslaved persons are no longer enslaved. They should be free. And then the other reason that the star is there and that it's white is that it represents freedom for African Americans in the 50 states. There's a line across the flag that separates the blue section from the red section, and it's not a straight line, it's an arc, and the arc represents a new horizon.
And then around the star is this almost energetic looking jagged star. They kind of refer to it as something similar to a Nova, and it represents new beginnings. It is my prayer, God hear me, please, that at these various events that are going to be going on around the country in the coming days, that there is some type of focus placed on voting. All things voting, not any one thing in particular about voting, every and anything that deals with voting, those are the types of things that need to be highlighted.
And I say this because I'm starting to hear more and more statistics about the numbers of African Americans that are voting, or should I say not voting. The older groups aren't doing it as much anymore, and it could be for a number of reasons. It could be transportation issues. Now that they're getting up in age, they may not drive anymore.
So now they're relying on family members to help them to get to the polls. Well, that could very well be an issue, especially if the younger people in the family don't believe in voting, because then now I'm not going to waste my time to take you to the polls, when I don't even believe in this thing. You know, we need to make sure that people understand that voting locally matters so much because those are the types of things that are going to affect you, and that are going to affect you sooner than anything else that you would be voting for on the national level. So voting is so important, and we really have to start taking some type of active interest in these various topics that are going to put us into the future.
They're going to put us in a better position in the long run. We can't wait until being started to go sour to then say something, you know? And the thing is, you need to know where you've been to know where you are and where you're going, but we also have to keep in mind that there's nothing stopping us from ending up going back in history. So we need to be mindful of the different platforms that people are running on, and we need to get out there and vote.
I don't know any other way to say it. We need to vote. Thank you for joining me for today's episode. And just to let you know, I intentionally decided to do this episode well out from Juneteenth.
Just in case you wanted to one, go celebrate it someplace or check out a celebration. And two, in case you wanted to get involved and find out, hey, is there a voter registration booth? Is there some type of voter information that's being handed out because of so I would like to volunteer some time to help with that cause? So there's a method to my madness.
That's the reason why I wanted to put out this episode earlier. In the meanwhile, you know where to find me Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube at Hey, even that's at H-E-V-E-T-T-E or just look for the hashtag tweet trends. Have a great weekend and see you guys back here on Tuesday.