As we celebrate Freedom through the holiday of Juneteenth, let us examine, and celebrate how and when Freedom came to Indian Territory. None of the three gestures of freedom or emancipation in the US affected the enslaved people in the Five Nations. The Emancipation Proclamation, the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, as well as the Juneteenth announcements in Galveston Texas, all bypassed the enslaved families in the Five Nations.    Juneteenth can however be viewed as a symbolic day to celebrate freedom. And beyond that, we as descendants of Oklahoma Freedmen should make the effort to find those freedom stories, because it came in different ways in each tribe, and in each domicile. However, Juneteenth kicks of an entire season of Freedom, from the 19th of June, to the 4th of August, we call their names, learn the dates that are significant, and we relish the resilience of our ancestors to come out of that institution that bound them to others and their ability to still rise up and raise the following generations, in dignity, peace and freedom.    So as many of us celebrate Freedom, we too can embrace this symbolic day and commit to not only finding their stories--ous stories and to walk into the future as a free people richly connected and nurtured by our past. We are free!

This was an effort to capture details from the life of Caesar Bruner leader and founder of the Bruner band of Seminole Freedmen. But the more I researched Caesar the man, the more I learned about the very dynamic structure of the communities of Seminole Freedmen. This is a community of many parts, based in Oklahoma, Texas, Mexico, as well as Florida, The Bahamas, and also the Gullah Geechee communities of South Carolina. Caesar Bruner was a dynamic leader surrounded by an even more dynamic community of survivors, leaders, warriors and more.

On this first 5th Monday taping, I had a wonderful conversation with Kenneth, founder of the Descendant Freedmen Alliance of Kansas City. Mr. Ford's ancestry comes out of the Creek Freedman Sells family from Taft Oklahoma. He has become a leader in the Kansas City area, in organizing a group of Oklahoma Freedmen descendants to gather, and study their history coming from the Five Tribes. In this conversation we learn about the how he made a discovery about his own history and later learning how many of ther families in the greater Kansas City area share a similar family story.   (To save time for listerners, fast forward to the 30 second mark on the recording where the conversation begins. This will bypass the silent space on the tape.)

This is the story of a man who enlisted in the Union Army when he was in his late 30s and nearly 40, and ended up participating in several major battles in Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory. After the war he became an advocate for Chickasaw Freedmen and even traveled to Washington DC to present a memorial to Congress from the Freedmen Community. Isaac Alexander who also emerged as patriarch to two large family clans, has a distinguished history and hopefully will have a story that will no longer be ommitted from the anals of Oklahoma nor Chickasaw history.  

This episode explores the records that can tell you more about lives of Oklahoma Freedmen many decades before the Dawes era.  Slave Schedules, Indian Pioneer Papers, WPA Slave Narratives, Family Search tribal records, and Ancestry US Marriages, Citizenship and Census 1841-1927, are some amazing collections that might open doors for you. Take a deeper dive into some of these records and hopefully you will come out with a more indepth understanding about the lives of your ancestors.

From the 1860s onward after slavery was abolished in Indian Territory, the Freedmen, once enslaved in the Five Tribes found themselves in a quest for the education of their children. As early as the 1860s after the treaties were signed, schools began to appear in the Cherokee Nation. Each decade more schools appeared, most as neiorhood schools or day schools but a few boarding schools some supported  by the various Church Missions in Indian Territory. This week's podcast looks at some of those schools and thanks to much of the research of the late James McCullough, a close look at education among Cherokee Freedmen provides an amazing array of information in this area.  This podcast presents some of this information that has been found.

While browsing through Dawes Cards, an interesting community of seventeen Choctaw Freedmen appeared on a series of cards. They were interesting because they did not reside in the Choctaw Nation, and in an unlikely place. Years later they had resettled in Choctaw County Oklahoma, well into the 20th century. Why did they live outside the nation?  Do they still have ties where they were during the years of the Dawes Commission? Are they your ancestors?

This episode reflects the life of a man born in Virginia, taken to Mississippi, and then to Indian Territory. His name first appears in a letter to the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865. His name appears again in a letter sent to Congress on behalf of Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen. Over the years his name would sometimes appear on random documents because he served his community as an interpreter, being fluent in Choctaw. From his letters to his acts of service the words of this man made a difference, and for many thanks to Watson Brown, they had a voice.

Today is the 4th Monday, and this year on the 4th Monday I shall take a dive into the many record collections that reflect the Freed people among the Five Nations of Oklahoma. These are records of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Nations. Many of these records extend decades back before the Dawes Commission. For those who want to take their documented past back to the years before the Civil War, this episode will mention the various record sets that reflecting an amazing presence in these tribal nations. Hopefully many of you are already using these records, and possibly there are some of you who have never used this plethora of reocrds that bring forth our history and our truth.

At the top of Honor Heights in Muskogee Oklahoma an old school sits between a large water tank and a hospital. It is visited each year by hundreds of people. However, many who visit the site leave with no knowledge that it was once a school. The site is the Five Civilized Tribes Museum, and the school was once known as Evangel Mission School. It is the only structure of a Freedman School that remains standing in the state of Oklahoma. Established in 1883, and placed in the Old Agency Building for the Creek Nation, this structure stands beautifully on the hill with only a school bell to hint to visitors that it may have at one time, been a school. Evangel Mission, is a school that we must not forget.