From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm John McWhorter, and you know, I am recording on Juneteenth.
Juneteenth is, of course, the Black American holiday that celebrates emancipation,
and the name of it combines June and 19th,
and there are things that Juneteenth can point us to about language, and linguistics.
Some of you may guiltily wonder why you hadn't heard of Juneteenth until recently.
And I might mention that it is a holiday with a long tradition in the Black community,
but often it was known as Emancipation Day.
To be honest, I grew up knowing of it as that rather than Juneteenth itself.
There was actually, you know, you know what's coming.
There was a Broadway show tune called On Emancipation Day.
This is way back in the aughts.
This is written by William Marion Cook and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the famous black poet.
It is from what you could call the first black Broadway musical,
depending on where you're going to draw the line.
That's In Dahomey.
What you're listening to underneath is the tune of On Emancipation Day being played on...
A player piano, and this is a crack arrangement.
To be honest, even though the lyrics were written by Paul Lawrence Dunbar,
who was black, they don't hold up today and might offend many.