---
title: Juneteenth is not A Liberal Holiday: Conversation with Immanuel Jarvis
description: Juneteenth is not A Liberal Holiday: Conversation with Immanuel JarvisReclaiming Juneteenth as a Republican victory for real freedom, faith, and the Black commu...
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**![Juneteenth Freedom Day](https://thewilmingtonstandard.com/images/podcasts/standardpodcast/2026/june/juneteenth/juneteenth.jpg)Reuel Sample**  
Welcome to the Standard Podcast, I'm Reuel Sample. It's a day about delayed but real freedom, a day about the law finally being enforced and a triumph of the union over slavery. It's where we started to recognize that we are all made in the image of God regardless of our skin color.

We are talking, of course, about Juneteenth, and it might surprise many to find out that it has been celebrated for years in backyards and communities, but only recently come to the full light of a recognized holiday. Here to talk about this and more is Immanuel Jarvis from the Frederick Douglass Foundation here in North Carolina. Immanuel, thanks for being here.

Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks so much. Pretending that I am not that bright, and that's not terribly difficult to do.

Tell me, what is Juneteenth all about?

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Well, Juneteenth is a holiday that generally has not been in the history books. I know growing up in school, it was never spoken about. And quite frankly, I never heard Juneteenth until about 10 years ago, at all, period.

Didn't even know what it was. And again, like most people, you think Juneteenth, you see Black people celebrating to have their little cookouts and, you know, they're doing their parades and things like that. Like, oh, some kind of Black holiday.

Okay. Whatever. And then you start doing your research and you find out, wait a minute.

This was a very pivotal role in American history. It should be celebrated, but the people who should be championing it and celebrating it the most, the ones who made it happen. And surprise, it was the Republicans who actually made it happen.

And so what it was is that there was obviously, we had the Civil War. And actually, in the middle of the Civil War, you had Abraham Lincoln, who was the first Republican president. A lot of people don't realize this, is that Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1861, I believe.

And the Republican Party was created in 1854. So within seven years of a brand new party, they are electing a president of the United States. It's almost like imagine in 2019, there's a brand new party.

And in 2026, they elect a president of the United States. It's pretty amazing to go from some schoolhouse in Wisconsin to be able to have your leader being a Republican. But that was Abraham Lincoln.

He was the first Republican sitting president.

**Reuel Sample**  
And not just a Republican, he was an unapologetic abolitionist when he ran.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
He was. Now, the thing about it is a lot of people think that abolitionists during that time are people who wanted to end slavery. In my research, that really wasn't his gig.

He didn't want the slavery to expand. If you can think about it in the 1850s, people are going out West. You got the Nebraskas, and now we're going further than that.

We're going to Wyoming and then New Mexico is going all the way up to California. There's a whole new frontier. I mean, there was a lot of excitement that America was really growing and expanding in its geographical, its population, the natural resources that it has.

And there was a very exciting time. And but a lot of people, especially of North, were concerned that the Southern expression of slavery was going to start sliding to the West as well. And they didn't want that.

They did not want the expansion of that. And so they fought tooth and nail. And it's funny, it was a Free Soiler party.

It was the Whigs party. Some of you guys have heard of the Whig party. And actually, there were some Northern Democrats that really were against slavery expanding.

And it's interesting. It wasn't just because of the moral destitute of the institution. Believe it or not, majority people were against slavery because of the political and the financial economic reasons why it was disadvantaged to people in the North.

I mean, think about it. If you have, you're in Ohio and you have a wheat field and you and your sons are out there and you hire some people to come in and do the wheat and do the wheat and you're spending money and energy on wages. And then you look down there, down South, and they got like, you know, 12 slaves down there for free labor.

Obviously, your wheat is going to be more expensive than the crop that they have. And it wasn't fair. And they hated that.

They felt like economically, it just wasn't right. Number one. Then also politically, they felt it wasn't right.

We all remember something called the Three-Fifths Compromise. And the Three-Fifths Compromise is that although these men and women who were enslaved had no rights, they had no autonomy over their own body or anything, they were still trying to count them for a population for the growth of the delegation in Congress. And people in North says, oh, no, you're not, no, no, no, you're not going to do that.

You're not going to sit there and count a whole bunch of slaves. And they don't even have a voice. They can't even marry who they want to marry.

They can't do anything. You've got to use them. No, no.

So they went back and forth, back and forth. And that's where the Three-Fifths Compromise came from. So that means that each slave would be considered three-fifths of an individual.

Now, I know in the Black community, they take that as a slight. Like, oh, man, we were just already considered three-fifths of a man. Well, if you understand your history, you understand that they were trying to make us a full man without representation.

So we're trying to use, we have no voice, but they're trying to use our numbers to advance their own cause. And it was in North that says, no, no, no, you're not going to be able to do that. The best you'll be able to do is use three-fifths of this labor, this free labor that you shouldn't be using in the first place to be able to advance your policy.

So a lot of it was economic. A lot of it was also political. And then there's also the moral stain of slavery.

They just felt as though that it didn't match up with the Constitution. It was just like, this is not it. And it was kind of tolerated in the South.

They figured it was kind of a cultural thing. But they just like, you know, this is, we really don't like this. I mean, we'll deal with it.

But then when there was this expansion, this expansion, it started sliding out West. And there was actually a compromise. There was a, I guess, I don't remember this guy's name.

And please forgive me for giving me this kind of raw history lesson. I'm just kind of going with it. But there's this congressman out of Chicago, who got his name back in the 1850s.

He came up with this called Nebraska-Missouri, I think it was Nebraska-Missouri Compromise.

**Reuel Sample**  
Yeah, it was the Missouri Compromise.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
There you go. Missouri-Nebraska Compromise. And what he said is that all the, and he was trying to do a railroad all the way from Chicago, all the way down to Louisiana.

So that, you know, trade and merchants and all that can go up and down freely. Now you think to yourself, why would he want to do that? Well, the real reason why he wanted to do that, he had also ulterior motives.

Because the land that was going through the Southern part of Illinois was kind of his. And he knew that by going through there, the value of his property would explode. So it wasn't just, you know, I wanted commerce to grow.

He also would look, he was also looking at the possibility of kind of gaining a little bit with equity in his land. Anyway, the problem is, is he made a fatal mistake. And this literally blew up the country.

This was the start of the war, really. He said every state that is from Illinois all the way down, will get to choose if they want to be a slave state or not. He messed up when he did that.

Because Ohio, Illinois, all these states, like Missouri, like, oh no, we're not in the Northern country. Northern states were losing their junk. They were, they were losing it.

And it was like, this was actually the exception of the Republican Party. Because these Free Soilers and Whig Party and the Democrats that were up there, they're like, no way. And they didn't feel like the Whigs were paying attention to this.

The Free Soiler Party was just all over the place. And so they said, you know what, we need to come up with a brand new party. And so 1854, they started the Republican Party for the express reason, one reason, to prohibit the expansion of slavery.

**Reuel Sample**  
You know, it occurs to me that the tactics of the Democrats really have not changed. The modern day three-fifths, although they're trying to count the, as the whole person is the illegal immigrant, is that you see, you see Democrat areas wanting to count all the illegal immigrants in their areas so that they can then bolster their own representation. But like the, like the slaves in the, in the South, they had no vote.

And, and they weren't really concerned about that. So things, things don't change much. So Abraham Lincoln gets elected.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Yeah. So Reuel, what you said was really profound. Um, just now you said the tactics really haven't changed.

They're using marginal people, groups, vulnerable people, groups to advance and use them to solidify their power. Bottom line. They did it in 1854.

They're doing it in 2026. There's nothing changed. I mean, yeah, that was 167 years ago, but it's the same type of tactic.

So when you hear the whole expression of, oh, well, the side switch and Republicans became Democrats and vice versa, obviously not because the same, the same spirit that is in the Democrat party today was in the same Democrat party before.

**Reuel Sample**  
Yeah. And they have, they have fought, we're going to get, we're going to get into this, but they have fought equal rights, equal access for century, for a century after the end of the war, they were still trying to limit the rights of blacks. So, uh, and it was, it was, it was a Republican president.

It was, uh, Republicans afterwards that brought everything down. Uh, so Lincoln goes to war. Uh, he didn't want to, but he had to.

And we spend three bloody years. Very bloody at war with each other.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Very bloody. It was interesting that during this time, his relationship with Frederick Douglass became very, very strong. And you can imagine the pressures that Abraham Lincoln is under.

He doesn't want the union to completely shatter and rip apart, which is, that's exactly what's happening between the union and the Confederacy. And here comes Frederick Douglass saying, uh, you're not going far enough, Abe. And he's like, are you kidding me, man?

He says, no, you have to eradicate slavery altogether. And you can imagine Abraham Lincoln's like, I, you, you have no idea the pressure that I'm under. And it's, it's.

**Reuel Sample**  
So let's, let's bring in. Yeah. Let's, let's bring in Frederick Douglass, because if you're outside of political circles that you and I sort of operate in all the time, you probably haven't heard about Frederick Douglass a lot.

So, uh, you know, you hear about Martin Luther King, you hear about, uh, um, uh, you know, Malcolm X, you hear about, um, um, uh, Thomas on the Supreme court, judges justice Thomas, but you don't hear about Frederick, Frederick Douglass. Uh, who's Frederick Douglass?

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Well, Frederick Douglass was a slave. And he was actually rescued by his soon to be wife. Believe it or not.

His wife created a uniform for him to make him look like a sailor. I saved up all of her pennies, sold him a uniform to look in just like the sailor and was able to get some papers that kind of look the same. So you have Freedman's papers, and he was able to get on a ship and go from Baltimore and up to New York where they got married, started a family.

And because he was such a great communicator, he kind of started going from church to church. Speaking about his, um, Oh, what happened? Speaking about his, um, I don't know.

I'll figure it out later. Um, speaking about his, his plight, like my plight right now in the dark. Um, I'll figure something out in a little bit.

Um, but anyhow, so he, um, he, he started speaking in churches and time he was speaking talented about his story, uh, people were just enamored and they wanted more and they wanted more. And so, um, he just kind of, his group, his popularity grew exponentially. Before you know it, he was in London, England, uh, speaking, um, in, in London, in England about the abolition of slavery.

And as you know, um, by history, um, in England, they actually abolished slavery before, um, the United States of America. And so he was actually pivotal in that and he came back and his wife and him, um, kind of started underground, whatever, not started underground, whatever, but participated it in it a lot. Um, and through that, it kind of just grew and grew.

And so he, uh, rose into this incredible promise because he was probably one of the most, uh, prolific or, or taters, um, and writers speaking about the, the slight of the American slave trade. And so, um, was he self-taught?

**Reuel Sample**  
Was he self-taught?

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Yeah. The story goes is that he went down to the docks one day as a slave because he was working down there for his master. And he found a little, a little white boy down there and he started kind of befriending him a little bit.

Apparently he didn't know he was, the little white boy didn't know he was a slave. So they're talking and he would bring extra food and give it to the boy because the boy was poor. He says, Hey, I'll give you a little bit of extra food if you kind of teach me how to read.

And so unbeknownst to his slave owners, he learned how to read by a little boy down on the dock. And so over the course of months and years, he became, he was able to teach himself how to read, learn how to read, learn how to write. And little by little just grew his vocabulary.

And I guess it goes to show you that when an individual truly has a desire, they could take even the small morsels of education and explode, put those seeds in the ground and nourish them and grow them to be one of the finest communicators of American history. He found himself in the White House, not just talking with the president, but also talking with congressmen and so forth. And he became friends with Abraham Lincoln.

They actually respected one another. It just wasn't like a, you know, as a very professional relationship. Yes, because he was a president of the United States, but Abraham Lincoln was a very unique guy.

He was very open. And he opened himself for criticism, fair criticism. They talked, they debated for a long time, for many, many weeks.

And finally, he was able to convince Abraham Lincoln that, yes, he needed to not just control slavery and keep it in the South, but to completely eradicate it. And here comes the Emancipation Proclamation that was written.

**Reuel Sample**  
So Frederick Douglass was behind the idea of the Emancipation Proclamation. And let me get this right, is that he is there in the White House with Abraham Lincoln. And every account shows that Abraham Lincoln's inner circle was dysfunctional at best.

They've got things going all over the place. The war did not start off well for the North. The only reason why we were able to be victorious in the end is that we had the manufacturing processes that the South did not have.

And in the middle of all this mess, Frederick Douglass says, not only do you have to end the institution of slavery, you've got to free them all with the Emancipation Proclamation.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Absolutely. And you can imagine, I mean, it took many, many months to be able to convince his friend, because he considers Abraham Lincoln his friend, to be able to do that. But he did it.

The problem is, is that it's, like I said, when I was speaking the other day, is that it's one thing for me to write you a check roll. If I wrote you a check for, let's say, $150,000, like, man, I really like your podcast, and I really want you to do really well. Let's get a brand new set for you.

Let's get a studio for $150,000. You see it? There it is.

And I put it in my pocket. And he's like, so you're going to mail that? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, no problem.

I'm going to send it out to you. No problem. And a week goes by, and then two weeks goes by.

Like, okay, they call me up. Hey, great. Hey, that was a great podcast.

Okay, get that check. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to send it, you know, any day now. It goes three years.

And you're like, wait a minute, you wrote a check with my name on it. I saw you write the check, but I can't cash it, because you still have it. Well, Juneteenth was when they were able to cash the check.

Because after all this time, finally, when Union soldiers went to the lowest, most remote part, which was Galveston, Texas, and rode into Galveston, Texas, we had slaves that didn't even know that they were free. And it wasn't until Union soldiers, yes, to a Republican president, to the Republican party, rode into Galveston, Texas, and declared, hey, guys, you don't have to do this anymore. This is your last day of slavery.

Everyone in this nation is free. No more endangered servitude. And that was a day that had so much adulation and celebration.

And it became, you can imagine what that was to you. I mean, think about Galveston, Texas in June. Come on.

Look, wherever you are in June is hot. Galveston, Texas in June, my God, you know what that's like. That's hot, man.

And you're out there, you got your hat on, and you're doing what you're doing, whether you're doing tobacco, whether you're doing corn, or you're just in the field. And then all of a sudden, this army comes up, and you're like, you put down your pitchfork, and you're like, what's going on over there? And the Mormon come, what's happening over here?

Well, better keep working. You don't want to get in trouble. So you keep working, but you're looking over your shoulder to find out what's going on.

And all of a sudden, you hear from a bullhorn, all slaves by the United States government are hereby free. I can't even imagine what that felt like. I don't think really anyone can.

But that was a day that changed their lives. Not today, but that was a day that changed their lives. You can imagine the tears, the crying, the hugging, the dancing.

And it's interesting. You know what? I'm going to say this, but because normally people don't talk about this, but I don't care.

I can talk about stuff like that. There were people crying that they didn't want to leave. They didn't know any other life.

Here's the thing. We had this misnomer that every slave was beaten basically to death almost. And they were given slop by the pigs.

And many of them were. Some of them were treated horribly. But there actually were slaves that loved their masters.

They were treated pretty decent. And when they would say, you have to stop working. You must leave the plantation.

You must leave today. Get all your stuff and you're not hereby released. There were some that were very upset because they didn't know what to do.

They didn't know where to go. It's not like, oh, I'm going to go back to my house. What house?

I'm going to go back to my field. What field? If all you've known is this house and this field and this kitchen, and then all of a sudden you're told to pack your bag and leave, where am I going?

So it was a very complex day with a lot of joy, a lot of just celebration. But you have to realize that there's a little bit of mixture that like, so what's next for me now? What do I do now with my freedom?

If you've never had it and you've never experienced it, do you even know how to operate it?

**Reuel Sample**  
And that's where the whole, in many cases, where the whole idea of sharecroppers came in is that they moved from being owned slaves to being back on that same plantation, but in a different relationship with the plantation owner who no longer owned them, but still owned the land. And so that kind of morphed into a whole different kind of relationship.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
It did. And in some ways it almost returned back because if you had sinister individuals who owned land, they would create deals that really entrapped Blacks and Whites for that matter, because there were Whites that were sharecroppers as well. But Blacks primarily into a situation where they were basically slaves.

Again, they were working, they were getting a little bit, but not enough to do anything with. So sharecropping, my grandfather, believe it or not, was a sharecropper. He was born in 1900 in Georgia.

I think it's Savannah, Georgia. And he was a sharecropper as a little boy. And so I even have that kind of in my DNA, in my bloodline.

So I know what that, a little bit about that is. But yeah, you can see how the relationship changed from slavery to sharecropping. And in some ways it was redeemed some days.

In some ways it actually returned back to really what it was before, just with a different name.

**Reuel Sample**  
So the history from there, by the way, Savannah is another place that you don't want to be in in the middle of summer. Just for the record. No, you do not.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Dear God.

**Reuel Sample**  
You're right. I'm ready to do that on accident. So the history from there went up and down, up and down.

Is that, I believe there's, I believe the first Republican, the first Senator elected, let me start that again. The first Black Senator was a Republican, elected, I think even before the current president.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Absolutely, yeah, there's an entire delegation. Yeah, entire delegation. I mean, there was voter drive, just like there's voter drive now in Seoul to the polls and Black people trying to shuffle people to the Democrat party to vote.

It was basically the same thing to the Republican party, because they knew that for once they actually had a party that was actually standing up for them. They were the ones who imposed the 13th, the 14th and the 15th amendment, right? They were the ones that were trying with the reconstruction, being able to make sure that in the Freedmen's Bureau, making sure that Blacks actually had places to live, land, they could actually have an opportunity to grow a crop.

That's all they knew. They knew agriculture for the most part. So give them back an opportunity to be able to make a living for themselves.

So yeah, it was really the emancipation and the growing and the helping, the insisting of the Republican party in the obviously late 1800s, moving even into like the 1930s. And with the NAACP and W.E. Dubois and some of the other liberalism that kind of came into that was competing against Booker T. Washington in the 1910s and then going into the 20s.

At one point, then it turned into a 50-50. So 50% of Blacks had more of a liberal view and 50% were about conservative. And if you're honest, and I've said this before, a seesaw only works when you have equal weight on each side.

If you only have weight on one side, a seesaw doesn't work. And the reason why politics don't work for African-Americans right now is because 90% of the weight is on one side. It doesn't work.

One side just says, you know what? There's no reason to even bother with them. They're not going to vote for us.

The other side says, don't do anything for them. They're not going anywhere. And so they are a voting bloc that is completely overlooked.

They're pandered to in October before the election season. Hey, vote for us. Or they're going to put you back in chains.

Or hey, vote for us. They're going to cut your Medicaid. Or hey, vote for us.

You're going to take this away or take your liberties away. You can't vote anymore. Stupid stuff like that.

But in February, they're nowhere to be seen. In March, they're nowhere to be seen. And so Blacks are really holding the bag, not really being able to move ahead because you have two political parties that both of them look at them as, eh, it doesn't really matter.

They're going to be here or not. They're going to vote for me or they're not. I don't have to fight for their vote.

**Reuel Sample**  
So is the Black community in the Democrat party the modern political version of the sharecropper? They don't know where else to go. They don't know how to handle this freedom.

I don't know. I don't want to come across as anything other than trying to explore that a little bit. Because on the outside of it, the Democrat party has done, the liberal movement has done nothing to the Black community except literally destroy it from inside.

Yet Blacks continue to vote liberal, or at least caucus liberal.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Well, yeah, they do. They're caucus liberal. So and you ask yourself why, and I've asked myself why many times, even sitting in this chair.

And I think what I've come to the conclusion is that we all remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And on the bottom level, you have food, water, shelter. Okay?

And if you don't have that bottom rung, that bottom level, then nothing else really matters. Okay? You can't talk about self-actualization and community and things like that when you're struggling for your food, water, and your shelter.

And what the liberal persuasion has done very well is they focused on that lower area. And they said, look, we're going to give you food. We're going to give you water.

We're going to give you shelter. And so because of that, it says, hey, all you need to do is vote for us. We're going to give you that.

It met the immediate needs of the human. And let's be honest. If you don't meet the immediate needs of a human, don't expect anything else from them because that's the primal need.

If their little child is going to bed and all they have is a Pop-Tart that day, they need food. They need formula, right? They need these type of things.

They need clean water. They need, hey, if I'm going to be homeless and there's a political party that says, hey, we'll give you housing. We'll give you vouchers.

We'll give you a hug. We'll give you Section 8. Then you begin to be endeared by them because if it wasn't for them, you'd be on the street.

And so they know this. It's interesting that the conservative persuasion starts from the top down. They don't start from the bottom up.

So we start talking about liberty, freedom.

**Reuel Sample**  
Yes, yes. And let's be honest. And to his credit.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Yeah, go ahead.

**Reuel Sample**  
To his credit, I think Donald Trump was the first president in a long time. To start from the bottom because he said, look at the price of eggs. You know, that's, that's the most basic need right there.

That's food.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Yeah.

**Reuel Sample**  
Instead of, instead of starting with these extraordinarily high level and they're very important, but you're right. If you're not feeding them, they're not going to listen to nobody. No matter what your skin color is, is going to listen to you.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Absolutely. And so they've been able to meet that primal need and they've endeared generations of individuals. They never get past that primal need and they keep them there.

So it's interesting how you said the modern day sharecropper. Wow. That is, I never thought of it that way, but essentially what it is, is, hey, look, you know what, what gave you, you know, you don't know what nothing else to do.

So what we're going to do is this. You're going to work my field and get working hard and I'm going to take 90% because it's my field, but I'll give you 10%. How's that?

And he's like, well, I don't know what else to do. So, um, I guess 90%, 10% is better than nothing. And you get to go home.

And by the way, you get to go home every day. Hey, you get to go home. You get to marry whoever you want to marry.

I wouldn't steal your children from you because I can't by law. So you just come here, just show up at seven o'clock in the morning. You probably leave about seven or eight at night and you work by field and I'll give you 10% of, of whatever comes from it.

He's like, that, that sounds better than what I had before. So here we go. And your children are going to, your children are going to work by fields too.

Absolutely. The problem is, is the 10% is not enough for you to get ahead. It's just enough for you to feed your belly so you can come back the next day.

So in essence, it goes from a chains around your wrist to chains around your industry, your work. And today we have chains that are between the six inches between our ears. Because if you think you can't, if you think that you're a victim, guess what?

You're a victim. If you think that you'll never get ahead. If you think the white man will always keep you down.

If you think that if a black man actually is successful, he's just a token. Guess what? You will never get anywhere.

You can keep going on Friday night to the lottery and buy your ticket. Cause that's the only thing you think is your, is your way out. But other than that, you are in chains.

And I don't know what's worse, physical chains that you can see or mental chains that you can't.

**Reuel Sample**  
I think they're both the same. I think they're both the same. And as we, as we talk about Maslow's, uh, uh, uh, uh, hierarchy of needs, they're both extraordinarily, uh, enslaving.

And that I use that word purposely is that, uh, if you are chained to somebody else mentally, uh, you're not going to go anywhere. If you're chained to somebody financially, you're not going to go anywhere. And on a spiritual basis, we talk about that all the time is that if you are, if you are enslaved to sin, you're not going to experience the freedom of Christ.

You just, it all depends. So let's talk about that chain. Uh, we often don't get a clear picture of where the black community is today because you just, you can never really trust sources and everything else.

What is the state of the black community today? Are they still chained to some things? Are they not stepping up properly?

Where are they? And, and, and, and how, how do conservatives reach out to the black community going forward?

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
That's a good question. Um, there's actually two, if you will, classes, um, it's not by pigmentation. It's not how dark your skin is or whatever.

It's actually mentality. I thought to myself, what is the percentage in the ratio? And I think it's probably a 65, 35.

65 is when you see on the TV, Robin, twerking, um, acting crazy, loud, belligerent, um, just, just completely unmanageable, disrespectful, um, inconsiderate. But you also have, and that, and there's, and because of that, there have this victim mentality that the reason why I'm acting this way is because of what has been done to me in my forefathers. And I have an excuse that this way, and this is my way of basically lashing out and revenge for what has happened to me and my people.

You have that, but you have another side that understands the history of slavery, but they look at their opportunities and say, you know what? I have an opportunity to go to Howard University, HBCU, Historically Black College University, or I can, I got into UNC. You know, we go there, I'm going to do well and become an attorney or a physician or an engineer.

And, um, I came from a good, strong background with a mother and a father that have high expectations from me. And we'd go on and make something for myself and they've gone on and done well. Interestingly enough, out of that 35% that I mentioned, sadly, a high rate, or I should say a ratio of that 35%, 35% is first-generation African-Americans.

It's the ones that parents came from Jamaica or the Bahamas. It's the parents came from Nigeria or Ghana, y'all, yes. And what it is, is that when those parents come to United States, they don't have the tattoo of slavery on their bloodline.

So they come to this country as this is a country of opportunity. This is not a country of victimization. Where I came from, I didn't have opportunity.

When I came from Trinidad, I didn't have this opportunity. The schools weren't as good. When I came from Grenada, I didn't have this opportunity.

When I came from Nigeria, I didn't have these opportunities. So this is my opportunity. It's a shot.

And then when they have kids, they're like, you better go to school and study. You better not mess around. I will beat your Black butt if you do.

And so there's a high standard, and these kids go on to do amazing things. Actually, they were talking, there was an article many, many years ago, I think by Cornel West, up at Princeton, I think, no, Harvard. And he said, and he wrote an article, I don't know why I've never forgotten this article.

He said, affirmative action is going to the wrong Blacks. And the reason why he said that is that when you start looking at who's actually getting the scholarships and moving up in post-secondary education, it's not slave-descendant Blacks, it's first-generation Blacks, the ones that are coming from the Caribbean, the ones that are coming from the continent of Africa. They're the ones, their parents are coming, living here, having children, and they're the ones doing amazingly well.

And so that's what you have. This dichotomy had the 65-35, and I believe that this chasm is getting larger and larger between the two. I know that some people in my circles, they're disgusted by the things that they see on TV, the fights, the brawls, the vandalism, the crime, the murderers, the gangs, the drug abuse, the doing all this kind of stuff in the middle of, you know, on Facebook with your gun.

It's embarrassment. We're like, I don't know who those people are, but it has nothing to do with them. And so there is this kind of, but at the same time, there is an allegiance to our ethnicity and quote-unquote our Black race, but it's hard to get down when you're just acting a fool like that.

And so when bad things happen, then they're torn with, okay, I understand this may appear to be an injustice, or it may not to be the fairest thing that happened to this guy or this kid or this lady or what have you. And so they're torn with, how do I mitigate this type of thing? I'm living my life, right?

I'm not acting crazy. I'm going to work. I'm making good money.

I'm making six figures. I have my daughter and my son. I put them in a private school and we're doing well, but they're looking over their shoulder and they see other people that look just like them.

They're completely almost different species, a different type of spirit on them. It's hard to reconcile those things.

**Reuel Sample**  
There are some things though that unite people across color spectrums, especially men. And we saw this in this last round of elections that got President Trump, things like boys and girls bathrooms, is that I don't care who you are. If you're a dad, you ain't going into my daughter's locker room.

Absolutely. If you're a guy, I don't care who you are. You're not going to be a girl.

And so we saw especially men, Black men, young men across the board, aligning with the Republican Party at least temporarily. Is that alliance going away or have we maintained that kind of inroads, especially with young Black men?

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Oh, it remains to be seen if it's temporary or even semi-permanent. I think the catalyst for this was really the lack of masculinity in our society. We've become so feminized, so soft spoken.

I mean, think about it. If you look at your newscast, in the news right now, any news personality and look at the man. He's not a man.

I mean, he's a man in terms of gender, but in terms of rugged masculinity, you don't see that. And so they kind of almost whitewashed that out. So here comes Donald Trump saying, look, I'm going to say what I'm going to say.

I don't really give a rip. I'm going to say whatever. You know, I'm going to tell you the truth, like it or not.

I don't really care. And so a lot of men, I think, identify like, man, someone's finally telling the truth, man. This is ridiculous going on here.

And men have been demonized for so long. Trust women, me too. All of these things have just kind of pressed men down.

The patriarchy, the patriarchy, the patriarchy. So especially young men, if you think about it, if you're a 24, 26 years old, and for the last eight to 10 years, you've been told that being a male and their maleness and having to reduce your maleness and your toxic masculinity, all these things for the last 10 years, that means in your most pivotal years of transition from a boy to a man, you're told that you shouldn't be one. And all of a sudden there's a man who's just not blinking.

He was telling you exactly what it is. And I think that was a gravitation. Now it remains to be seen because the bottom line, it comes down to your checkbook, comes down to what's in your refrigerator, what's in your 401k.

Are you able to find a job? And if most of your money's going in a gas tank every single week. So before, I would say when things started back in 25, things were rocking, things were doing amazing.

And it was a really good sign. Gas prices were low. People were getting jobs.

And even today reports are coming out, just the jobless rate, that the jobless rate is plummeting and people are finding work, gainful employment, which is good. It's not even about, and I write this in the book that I'm working on here, it's not just about how much you make per hour. But what I've learned is that work is worth.

And when a man is not working, he doesn't have worth. And this is the reason why someone can step on your brand new Nikes and you wanna pull out a gun and shoot them because they disrespected you and they stepped on your Nikes by accident. Because if you don't have any value in yourself, you don't have any value in the other person.

They have as much value as you, none. So I could just kill them because what are you worth? You disrespected the most valuable thing I got on my body, who what I am is my shoes.

Not my body, not my mind, not my intellect, my shoes, my $250 shoes. You stepped on the most valuable thing that I have. And so therefore I gotta take you out.

And that's where we're at. And so it remains to be seen. It remains to be seen if it stays.

I think masculinity is back on the rise and men are becoming not ashamed of being men, being leaders, being strong. We need to be empathetic. We need to demonstrate meekness and gentleness.

But at the same time, we need to make hard decisions and not flinch away from them when we need to.

**Reuel Sample**  
Yeah, yeah. There is a comic, it's my homage to comic books. There's a guy who displayed comic heroes from the 1950s to the same kind of comic heroes today.

The big comic heroes from the 1950s were just huge, rippling with muscles, kind of like what you and I look like. But today they're just slender and skinny and thin, exactly what the liberal left. And that's a subtle influence on our children and our boys who are reading those kinds of things.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Absolutely, absolutely.

**Reuel Sample**  
That's the kind of... So we talked about you're an author. You've got a book that has...

Has this just come out or has it been out for a while? It came out a year ago. What does God think...

About a year ago?

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Yeah, it came out a year ago.

**Reuel Sample**  
What does God think about Republicans? Immediately the title... We were talking about Abraham Lincoln earlier.

Abraham Lincoln was famously asked, is God on our side? And he said, I have no idea. I just hope that we are on his side.

And that title kind of makes me think of that question that we have.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
And that's great because that's exactly what it meant. I'd been a part of the Republican Party for about 15 years now. I was introduced to it and went to my first Black Republican Committee meeting.

I didn't know that there was any Black Republicans in Durham County. It was kind of crazy. I was like, wow.

And I remember that postcard, it said, did you know that there were 1296 Black registered Republicans in Durham County? We want to meet you. And I know exactly where I was standing.

I know exactly how I felt. My mouth just dropped. I couldn't believe it.

And so that was really my entrance into the Republican Party. And so I've been in it for a while. I've served in leadership.

I served as four terms as the Durham GOP chairman. And then one term as a fourth congressional district GOP chair as well.

**Reuel Sample**  
Four terms as a county chair?

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Yeah. Four terms, eight years, man. Still alive.

Still alive. Still made it. But yes, we did that.

Yeah, I know, right? And then one term as our fourth congressional district. So in 2023, I became the president of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of North Carolina.

But in all of that, my desire to be godly, not just entitled, but truly in deed and in practice, really try to be in front of the face of God on a daily basis, asking him for wisdom, asking him for forgiveness, asking him to deal with my heart in ways that maybe on the outside, everything looks good. It looks fine. But on the inside, I'm haughty.

I'm proud. I'm arrogant. I look down at people.

Those are the type of things. So reading scripture. And so one day I said, you know, God, what do you think about Republicans?

I mean, some of the, you know, when you think about that, some of the topics are kind of softball. Abortion, duh, pretty easy. Now, and the funny thing is I thought it was easy, but apparently it's not.

Because you got churches right now. And I'm like, the devil is a liar. Like what kind of, what kind of witchery is going on here that you have the audacity to have a collar on and say that abortion is women's reproductive freedom and right?

Apparently we haven't read in Psalms where it says, I knew you in the womb. I knit you in form together before you were even born. I knew your name.

Anyway, so those, we got those topics and then you can even get the homosexuality. And again, I thought that was a layup too, but apparently not because you got churches right now. Depending on the denomination, love is love.

No, lust is lust. That's what really what it is. It's not love is love, but nevertheless.

So some of these topics are pretty easy. However, when you start talking about taxation, immigration, and in 2021, 2022, that was a big deal, immigration. Some of these other topics, you really have to look to see, God, what do you think about these things?

And so for about three years from between 2022, I think, actually 2021 until 2024, I just really said, God, I just really want to know your heart on these issues. And so I just praying, and I've told people before, sometimes the reason why we don't know what God has or what his thoughts are is because we've never asked him. We come to him like a genie in the Bible.

God bless my wife, bless my kids, bless my car, bless my job, thank you for this, thank you for that. Thank you for this, thank you for that. Need some money, got a car, need brakes on the car, need this, I really want to get a job promotion.

God help me with that job promotion. Help me help my boss get fired because I'm sick and tired of him. You know, stuff like that.

But we just run through our little lines, just a thank you for this, thank you for this, I need this, need this, thank you for this, thank you for this, need this, need this. That's all we do, amen. That is not prayer.

That is not speaking to a holy God. I don't know what that is, that's genie in the bottle type stuff, but that's not speaking to a holy God. But really when we do, we honor who he is.

We sit in his presence for a little bit in the morning. And we just marinate on his goodness and who he is. And then we literally are able to commune with him just like a best friend.

And we're able to talk to him and believe it or not, believe it or not, believe it or not, he actually talks back. And little by little, just asking these questions. And so what I found is this, many of the topics, many of the policies and the value sets that the Republicans hold near and dear of nationalism, yes, nationalism is in the Bible.

Patriotism is in the Bible. Honoring rule of law is in the Bible. These are things, immigration and walls, yes, are in the Bible.

If someone has a problem with that, go to Nehemiah and let me know what you think. Then after you read Nehemiah, read Ezra and get back with me and see what you think. I don't know if you guys even recognize this, but if you go to Jerusalem, the cotton picking thing is considered a wall.

I mean, the whole city is a wall. So when people, Chris, just talk about, wall is not holy, it's not God, they're like, bro, you need to go overseas. Check out Israel real quick.

So, I mean, so obviously they're not reading their Bible and they're looking at the Bible through their political lens versus looking at their political lens through the scriptures. And there's a difference. Nevertheless, but what I've discovered is this, the policies may be right and true and holy and justified, but God started going with me to a layer deeper than just what we write in policies and what we hold near and dear.

He started dealing with me about our heart posture, our motives on why we actually enact these policies. And we've started really going deeper into the book. We start to realize that sometimes our heart is not pure.

Sometimes we don't care about the widow and the orphan and the foreigner. It's just about us. And I don't even know if I said this when I was speaking at the convention, but a lot of people think if I said, what is the opposite of love?

And most people would say, what? Hate, love, hate, love, hate. The opposite of love is not hate.

The opposite of love is indifference.

**Reuel Sample**  
Yep.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
When you just don't care, that is the opposite of love. So when Jesus talks about, you'll love your neighbor as yourself, that means that when you see and you're watching the news and you hear a murder in a really bad part of town with the typical people that look this typical way, typically dead on the street, you just don't go, there you go again, another one killing each other. You just shrug and go on to the next story.

That is the opposite of love. Now, I didn't say to weep over it, but there's something in your heart you should break because you know what? That's somebody's son.

That's somebody's brother. Could be even somebody's daddy. And there's true pain there.

And when we don't empathize with that, we're not loving. And so in this book, we start talking about really the heart posture and then what can we do to get back into that? So we truly are honoring God because here's the thing, we cannot expect for God to honor the Republican party if we're not obedient to him or we have corrupt hearts or they're greedy or they're arrogant or they're selfish or they're self-seeking or they're only within our own interests.

We cannot expect God to be in the midst of that. He's not gonna be there. And if he's not there, he's not blessed in it.

If he's not blessed in it, we're not gonna be successful. I don't care how many signs you have. I don't care how many doorknobs you do.

I don't care how many ads you do. It won't matter because if God is not with you, you won't be successful.

**Reuel Sample**  
1\. First, seek the kingdom of God. That's what Christ told us from the very beginning.

First, seek his kingdom. Everything else will follow after that. And even if you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you're not seeking God's kingdom first, right, nothing else matters and everything else goes wrong.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
And in his kingdom, his constitution is the word of God. So if you're not reading the constitution, you don't know your rights, you don't know your privileges, but you also don't know your responsibilities in that kingdom. The thing about it is the kingdom of God is invisible.

And so we have our five senses and we're looking at smelling and tasting and touching all day long. And we get infatuated with those things. I don't know about you, but I'm not like a car junkie.

But when a brand new model comes out and it's like, it looks really good, I'm like, oh my God, you see that new model? Woo, that was amazing. And I'm like wrapped into it.

I'm like, just look at the lines on that. Oh my gosh, the lights are so cool, right? So I'm all into it because I'm using my five senses.

But how many times in a day that I do that about the things of God, the kingdom of God? Oh God, whoa, that's the, generally I don't. And so for believers, for Christians, we have a dual citizenship.

We're citizens of heaven. We're also citizens of the United States of America. Dual citizenships.

And the more we stay in whatever country we primarily reside in, that's the tendencies that we're going to pick up. And so when we primarily reside and think of ourself as an American and I'm American, I love this country and this. I love my flag, I love patriotism.

And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. But that supersedes the kingdom of God that you're a son or daughter of the most high God.

That you're loved and cared by him. That you have nothing to prove to anybody. You have nothing to fear and you have nothing to hide.

If you don't have that locked down in your core, you will run to the constitution. You will run to your political party for significance, for value. And then you'll start getting into political tribalism.

Like, hey, everything we're doing is good and everything you guys are doing is bad. And even if we do something bad, well, we're doing it for the good reasons. And if you do anything good, well, you still do it for the bad reasons.

And that's that political tribalism that we find ourselves in.

**Reuel Sample**  
And, you know, that actually brings us right back to what we started talking about because you brought it up. You said Juneteenth that we're celebrating. I want to talk about the big thing that you've got going on in Raleigh.

Juneteenth, even though it's been celebrated in backyards for years, was signed into law by President Biden, a Democrat. But that doesn't mean that we as Republicans should ignore it, as conservatives should ignore it.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
You know, it's interesting. Since you said that, I had a flashback. I was eight years old, had a birthday party.

And my big gift, my uncle rode in a brand new bicycle for my birthday. And all the kids were like, wow. And I'm so excited.

I was happy. I was holding it. I was squeezing it.

I went outside and I rode it. And I thought it was awesome, okay? And about nine months later, I was talking to my mom.

And I was like, yeah, I was really happy. I really liked the bike that uncle gave me. And my mom looked at me like, your uncle did not give you that.

We gave you that bike. And I said, but he was the one who brought it in for me. He says, I don't care who brought it in.

We brought that bike to you. He just rolled it in and gave it to you for your gift. But that, and I didn't know for nine months, I thought that that bike was given to me by my uncle.

And I think the analogy stands true as well. I don't care who brings in Juneteenth. It's about the person who actually made it happen.

Republicans made it happen, okay? Donald Trump was supposed to sign that into law. He was very close.

Some people can remember this. He was very close to signing into law. And somebody got into his ears and said, don't do that.

Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. And for whatever reason, he listened. And as soon as he was summarily just moved out of the way, the first year Joe Biden was in office, he signed that thing into law.

Tried to take credit for it. Wow, wow. And so I don't care who signed it into law.

I care about who made it happen.

**Reuel Sample**  
So you've got a rally coming up this weekend in Raleigh. Tell me about that because I'm going to put all that on the podcast.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Yeah, it's not really a rally, it's a dinner. So we're going to have a celebration. It's called the Juneteenth Celebration.

It's sponsored by the North Carolina Republican Party and the Frederick Douglass Foundation of North Carolina. And this dinner and celebration is going to be, there's going to be dance, there's going to be vocalists, there's going to be commemorations. We're going to talk about the true history of Frederick Douglass, obviously, and his contribution into the Republican Party.

We're going to talk about the inception of the Republican Party. We're going to obviously talk about the history of Juneteenth. It's a full-out meal that we're going to have celebration.

And then, believe it or not, our featured speaker is going to be a lady who's the Associate Director at Hillsdale College up in Michigan. And she's actually over the Frederick Douglass Foundation scholarship that they have, they created. A lot of people don't realize this, but actually Hillsdale College was the first college that allowed a Black man on campus to actually study.

Frederick Douglass actually visited that campus and spoke as an abolitionist back in the early 1850s. So they have a very, very proud, a rich history of that. They teach it in their liberal arts curriculum.

And so she's going to be coming speaking. So we're really excited to have her. And the premise of this celebration is this, Roe.

I'm trying to take the holiday back. I'm sick and tired of Democrats taking the holiday they had no business taking. They were against it from the inception.

And my goal, and I may be the only man in North Carolina who thinks this, but I don't care. My goal is that the North Carolina Republican Party has the largest celebration for Juneteenth in the state of North Carolina, larger than the NAACP, the Urban League or any other Black group that we have the largest celebration. You know why we should have the largest celebration?

Because we have a lot to celebrate. It was a first accomplishment, the major massive accomplishment that this young Republican Party has been able to accomplish. And it stands still true today.

And millions and millions of people who have the freckles that are close together like mine get to enjoy because of the sacrifices that so many made.

**Reuel Sample**  
A lot of blood went into this, blood of white men, Black men. Absolutely. And a lot of agony over the years.

Immanuel Jarvis, boy, you know what? You and I had talked before we did this thing of, well, we're going to do this for 30 minutes. Well, it's 57 minutes.

And I have enjoyed every moment of this. Make sure that you check out his book, What Does God Think About Republicans? Also check out the Frederick Douglass Foundation.

We'll make sure that the website link is on the podcast page, not only for the Juneteenth celebration, but for all the ongoing work that the Frederick Douglass Foundation is doing. I'm going to give you the last word.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Yeah, well, thank you so much, Reuel. I really appreciate it. Yes, it can go.

The book is actually on Amazon. Pretty easy to find, What Does God Think About Republicans? You can get that book paperback or hardback, whatever you want.

The event, yes, it's this weekend. We've been working hard on, this is the second annual, so we're still growing this thing out. But we're excited about the people who are coming and are open to learning about the history of the Republican Party and the contributions that it made to really abolish the slavery of so many people.

I'm actually working on a second book right now, and that is called, What Does God Think About Democrats? So I'm in the midst of that book right now. That's interesting, interesting devotions and study.

And I'm really saying, God, what are your thoughts on their ways, their perspectives, their motives, their policies? Where have they gotten it right? Where have they gotten it wrong?

Again, I am not trying, I'm not an ideologue. So my job is not to be, oh, this is what they've done right. And this is what we've done all right.

And while we're better and while they're not. No, no, no, no. I said, what does God think about Republicans?

Not what does Immanuel think about Republicans? My opinion does not matter. It doesn't matter at all.

God's opinion matters on everything. And we should be beseeching him on a daily basis and saying, God, what do you think about these things? What do you think about my attitude?

What do you think about my marriage? What do you think about my parenting? What do you think about my involvement in the community?

Do I have a pure heart? Am I, do I have selfish ambition? Am I greedy?

Am I arrogant? Am I indifference to people that don't look like me or on the other side of town or on the other side of the world? Do I care?

Give me your heart. I want to be like you. And guess what?

You have that with a sincere heart. And little by little, he will give you his heart. And it's a beautiful thing.

**Reuel Sample**  
In other words, what you're saying is that we should stop asking each other. The first question shouldn't be, are you Republican or Democrat? The first question should be, do you know Jesus?

And are you following him with all your heart, mind, soul? Absolutely, man. Absolutely.

Immanuel Jarvis, thanks for being here. I hope you can come back with us again. Good luck on this week's celebration.

**Immanuel Jarvis**  
Thank you so much. Appreciate it, Reuel.

**Reuel Sample**  
Happy Juneteenth. We'll talk to you soon. This has been the Wilmington Standard Podcast.

I'm Reuel Sample. Thanks for listening.

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