Transcript
Into America
Get Your Freaknik On
Sharon Toomer: You might not ever cross a Black person in the United States who has never heard about Freaknik.
Maurice Hobson: Freaknik in many ways is what Woodstock was for white people.
Archival Recording: People were grilling out. Some of the frats were stepping. You know, people were really just hanging out. It grew, and grew, and got really big. I mean people were coming from all over the country. Not just college students, but other young Black singles.
Archival Recording: Ain’t been nothing like Freaknik.
Kenny Burns: He blurts out Freaknik. You got to come. I’m telling you this is out of control. I’m like what is it? He’s like, just imagine the biggest Blackest homecoming but in the spring. I’m like wait, I have to be there.
Archival Recording: It was a different kind of freedom. It was like freedom, but it was also like solidarity, freedom (ph) like a small nation.
Uncle Luke: It was a perfect storm. You know it could not happen anywhere else, it had to happen in Atlanta.
Trymaine Lee: Freaknik. Freaknik was a legendary spring party that started in Atlanta back in the early ‘80s. Every third week of April for more than 15 years, young Black people from all across the country would flood the parks and streets of Atlanta.
There was dancing in the middle of the streets, step shows, and one of the main attractions, concerts in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, rap stars like Outkast, Goodie Mob and Uncle Luke. And of course there were the after parties. It was part college homecoming, part family reunion.
People cruised the streets in their cars or on top of them bumping their music loudly, guys were trying to get with the girls and the girls were trying to get with the fellahs. It was ruckus and a little raunchy. OK, it was a lot raunchy.
By the early ’90s it was the wildest Black street festival in the country but it didn’t begin that way. It started back in 1982 when students from five historically Black colleges and universities in Atlanta decided to create a spring break event.
It was a small wholesome HBCU gathering, a few dozen people who would have no idea that they were building something that Black America would never forget. And it happened with no marketing, no social media, all word of mouth.
Freaknik became one of the biggest Blackest parties in history. A ’90s cultural phenomenon and a staple of southern hip hop culture.
Archival Recording: Freaknik ’95.
Archival Recording: Right there in front of Chicago (ph).
Lee: There have been similar Black student festivals over the years. Philly’s Greek Picnic starting in the ’70s. And Virginia Beach had Greek Fest in the ’80s, but Freaknik was something special. Freaknik gave us the music and artist of the dirty south and helped turn Atlanta into a Black cultural Mecca.
By the end Freaknik would fade in controversy. Its sheer size combined with all the alcohol and partying had led to some unsafe situations, especially for women. When the city of Atlanta shut down Freaknik it had gone from a mostly unregulated festival to a constant target of police harassment and violence.
But as much as that era, the ’90s was marred by violence and so much trauma, there was also unity and joy and unmitigated Blackness.
Archival Recording: Freaknik was the last free entertaining, non-sanctioned festival, something the people created for the people by the people. And there’ll never be another thing like that.
Lee: I’m Trymaine Lee and this is “Into America.”
This week, the rise and fall of the greatest block party America has ever seen and the impact that Freaknik still has on Atlanta and Black youth culture today, told by the people who lived it.
Luke: I was called the king of Freaknik.
Lee: Freaknik would be nothing without the man who put the freak in it, Uncle Luke.
First thing, brother, I just want to thank you. As a man of a certain age, I got a lot of play on a lot of dance floors because of you. So first of all, salute to you, brother. Thank you for everything that you’ve done for us.
Luke: You’re welcome. Hey, I always ask people who tell me their stories, you did come out all right, right?
Lee: Man, listen, very all right. Extra right.
Luke: OK. Good.
Lee: When you think about the socializing, right, if you were scared to get on the dance floor, the music comes on, all you have to do is get out there. If you get out there everything will take care of itself thanks to the music. So I think it helped a lot of us, I think.
Luke: I know, especially shy people.
Lee: Uncle Luke is a hip hop legend out of Miami who rose to fame in the late ’80s and early ’90s with explicit songs and music videos about sex and partying. His career took off during Freaknik, when he became the face of the festival at its peak.
Do you remember your very first Freaknik? Like paint the picture for us.
Luke: Massive concerts in the park, concerts in venues. You know it became the biggest festival, unauthorized festival in the African American community in the country. You know and a lot of young people being rebellious of the system and tapping into their history and their culture. And so even if it was the music, people understood more about the so-called man, the man and the suppressor.
Lee: But Freaknik in the ’90s wasn’t the same as the one Sharon Toomer helped start back in the ’80s.
Toomer: The first year it was just 60 of us gathering in a swathe of land on the corner of Monroe Drive and 10th Street.
Lee: In 1982 Sharon was a freshman at Spellman College, hundreds of miles away from her home in Washington D.C. She would often hang out at the Atlanta University Center, which consisted of Spellman, Morehouse, Park Atlanta, and Morris Brown.
In that year when several people decided not to travel home for spring break, they still wanted something to do.
Toomer: Back then it wasn’t automatic that you’re going to the beach or a lot of us just didn’t have the money to, you know, to go travel or whatever. So what are we going to host for those students who are staying there?
Lee: So the students decided to put a little picnic together.
But just like any school event, the occasion needed a name.
Archival Recording: She’s a super freak, super freak, she’s super freaky, now.
Lee: “Super Freak,” by Rick James had come out in ’81 and it was everywhere.
Archival Recording: She’s a very special girl.
Lee: So when a fellow student suggested they call the picnic Freaknik, everyone loved it. For the first two years of Freaknik, a couple dozen to a few hundred people gathered on a small patch of Piedmont Park in Midtown Atlanta on the third weekend in April.
Sororities and Fraternities put on step shows, folks threw meat on the grill, some people played touch football and others just kicked it, mingling with students from the different schools with a drink in one hand or maybe passing a jay.
Toomer: Just imagine a big family reunion. We gathered around. Of course we had some good spirit drinks, but it was really just innocent. Innocent fun, it was pure fun.
Lee: By the late ’80s word had gotten out. Their little picnic was mentioned in Spike Lee’s 1988 film “School Days” and a 1989 episode of “A Different World.”
Archival Recording: Come on, Freaknik is going to be live. Bobby Brown, Heavy D, two days of nonstop music, food.
Archival Recording: Men.
Lee: After this Freaknik took off, attendance spiked. Soon the event outgrew Piedmont Park. So the founders moved it to two other Atlanta parks but still the party kept getting bigger. It could no longer be contained. The only place left for it to go was the streets.
By the ’90s Freaknik had become a whole new Freaknik, filling three whole days with concerts headlined by major acts and more than 100,000 people coming to the city from other HBCUs like Tuskegee, Howard, Hampton, and FAMU, or just folks who wanted to get in on the action.
Hobson: Like when you would go to Freaknik it was just a world away in terms of what you’re seeing. So I mean it’s the first time I’m seeing, like, dudes with boa constrictors or small pythons on their arms and I’m seeing folk having, like, dance challenges in the middle of Peach Street. Like, it was just one of those things where it was just a good time.
Lee: Today Maurice Hobson is a historian and African American studies professor at Georgia State University. But in the ’90s he was just a young brother who didn’t miss a single Freaknik between 1992 and 1997. And it wasn’t just the festival itself. Maurice says the whole city, even the traffic became the party.
Hobson: I will never forget this. Like, cats, Black dudes used to be in F-150 trucks with a grill on the back of the truck like grilling meat, riding down Peach Street, riding slow and like trying to, you know, talk to young ladies.
Lee: Maurice remembers people slow rolling through the streets in their flashy cars with the windows down, blasting music, or getting out of their cars to dance with each other in the streets.
Hobson: Let me go on the record and say this about Generation X. I am a Generation X person, born mid-1970. We had a golden age sound in music, but our fashion was horrendous. You know, during that time in the summer you would wear Duck Heads.
So Duck Heads was this brand, and it was kind of gothy (ph), it was kind of boxish (ph), it had all these weird colors. When I say weird colors, it would be like a maroon on a blue, and it would be some real preppy, prep school white boy stuff right now. And khaki pants, cross colors on one side, Karl Kani on another side.
I mean, sometimes we looked like we were going to work at a damn construction site, overhauls (ph) and Timberlands. I look back at it now and be like, we were country, but we were having a great time.
Lee: To understand why Freaknik couldn’t have happened anywhere but Atlanta, Maurice says we need to understand the importance of the city as a Black Mecca.
Hobson: Atlanta’s Black Mecca-dom (ph) is based on three things Black education, the (INAUDIBLE) of the six colleges founded between 1865 and 1886, the second is Black economics the Sweet Auburn District which was deemed as the richest Black district in the world.
The third is Black political empowerment in electoral politics. We begin to see that kind of manifest in 1920s, it really takes root in the 1940s with the creation of the Atlanta Negro Voters League by John Wesley Dobbs and A.T. Walden.
Lee: Atlanta would later become central to the civil rights movement, the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr. and where a young John Lewis would launch his career. But Maurice says there’s a fourth reason why Atlanta is a Black Mecca.
Hobson: Now this is probably the most prominent thing is Black expressive culture.
Lee: In 1973 the city elected its first Black Mayor, Maynard Jackson.
Hobson: Maynard Jackson is one of the major catalysts for Freaknik. In 1974, in his first year as Mayor, Maynard Jackson created the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, which took a 1 percent sales tax and gave it to the creation of experiential art funded by the city. And in Atlanta at the time that meant the creation of Black experiential art.
Lee: At the same time, Jimmy Carter was Governor of Georgia.
Hobson: And Jimmy Carter brought this legislation that allowed for any music and movies to be produced in Atlanta, or TV shows, you get this major tax break. So when you watch movies and you see the peach at the end of a movie, that’s Maynard Jackson and Governor Jimmy Carter who put that together.
That actually becomes an extension of the Black political empowerment in relation (ph) with politics. And so Freaknik is the expression, it was the venue for the expression of Black expressive culture coming out from Gen Xers in the 1990s.
Lee: And as Freaknik was benefiting from Atlanta’s investment in the arts, Freaknik gave back to Atlanta too by introducing a whole new generation of Black professionals and creatives to a place where they could find better opportunities for success, wealth, and culture.
People like radio hosts and entrepreneur, Kenny Burns.
Burns: Spring of 1992 was my first Freaknik experience, and it actually changed my life.
Lee: Kenny now claims Atlanta as his hometown, but he’s originally from D.C. He first heard about Freaknik from a cousin who went to Morehouse and told Kenny that he had to come down to check it out.
Burns: Just imagine the biggest, Blackest homecoming but in the spring. And I’m like, wait, I have to be there. This was like a fish out of water experience with me. Not only did you have the biggest cluster of historically Black colleges and universities, but all types of different energies.
It was my first experience outside, of a different world, on TV that I saw real Greeks, the Omegas, the Alphas, you know the Deltas, the AKs, and the pride that came behind that sorority culture and Greek culture. And I remember, you know, just feeling so free. But it was amazing to experience, and it actually inspired me to move to Atlanta where I began my legend.
Lee: Going to Freaknik inspired Kenny to move to Atlanta and enroll at Morris Brown.
Burns: This was the Mecca of possibility; this was the Mecca. I think we had an opportunity in Atlanta. I mean, obviously the historically Black colleges and universities stood on the shoulders of the great civil rights leaders that were from here, so you had a tone of we built this city. You had a tone of we are rightfully supposed to be here. But then too, you’ve got to look at what was happening in hip hop.
Lee: And the music coming out of Atlanta at the time was the lifeblood of Freaknik.
Burns: This was 1992, Kris Kross just sold 4 million records, TLC just sold a gazillion records. Like Dallas Austin and Jermaine Dupri were young executives coming from the cloth of L.A. Reid.
Lee: During the ’90s Atlanta rap groups like Outkast, Goodie Mob, and Organized Noize were giving hip hop a new sound and southern flavor. And young Atlanta executives like Dallas Austin and Jermaine Dupri were producing some of the biggest songs in music.
Archival Recording: You need to git up, git out and git something. Don’t let the days of your life pass by. You need to git up, git out and git something. Don’t spend all your time trying to get high.
Burns: You heard Outkast and Goodie Mob it was so conscious but so potent, it was almost like soul food for real, pun intended.
Lee: Even as Atlanta became this global center for hip hop, Maurice Hobson says city folks from up north continue to look down on the southern city, to their detriment.
Hobson: When you came from New York, or Chicago, or Detroit they actually thought that they were coming down on some country bumpkins and they would try to come down and act like they were doing something.
And these Atlanta hustlers would be waiting on them, waiting to rob them, to do everything. When Goodie Mob in the song “Dirty South” says, “so when they pulled up bumpin’ ‘Rock the Bells’ we took what we want and left them quiet as hell. What you know about the Dirty South?”
Archival Recording: What you really know about the dirty south?
Hobson: They’re saying that like, when New Yorkers started trying to come to Atlanta and assert themselves, it was one of those things to where it was like, y’all (ph) think y’all (ph) coming down here, and you will get robbed.
Lee: By the mid ’90s Kenny Burns had found success on the Atlanta music scene by becoming a respected host and one of the biggest club promoters in the city.
Burns: That’s a fact.
Archival Recording: Appreciate you, KB. Y’all keep doing y’all (ph) thing, you know who it is V-103, that’s all right with me. You see what I see (ph)?
Lee: Freaknik was the beating heart of it. Kenny remembers throwing some wild industry parties on weekends for the Atlanta University Center.
Burns: Yes, I mean, Lil Jon was my DJ on Friday nights at the Funk Clinic. You know, I introduced Outkast their first day for the AUC. I brought Jay-Z here when he had a record called 22 Two’s and he was about to launch Roc-A-Fella Records.
I had the (INAUDIBLE) promo executives. I mean, Kenya Barris used to come to my party, a great friend. When you think about anybody that went to the AUC, anybody, they’ve come through the graces of the lifestyle specialist Kenny Burns.
Lee: But there’s one moment that everyone says took Freaknik to the next level.
Luke: I guess I would say I turned Freaknik up (ph).
Lee: It was the spring of 1993, and southern rap legend Uncle Luke had a new song, and Freaknik was his muse.
Luke: Every day of the weekend we had a different party. And so it was a party, a concert, and then I shot a video. And when I shot that video at Freaknik, you know, then it went out. And once I showed that video to the world this is what Freaknik really is, and after that, you know, the following years it became what was pictured on the video.
Lee: And that video was “Work It Out”?
Luke: That video was “Work It Out.”
Lee: The music video was shot throughout Atlanta on Freaknik weekend. It opens with Uncle Luke smoking a cigar, surrounded by beautiful half-naked women in a Jacuzzi when one of the women says she’s bored. Luke says, let me take you to the wildest, freakiest, party in the whole wide world.
Archival Recording: Work it out, work it out, work it out now. Work it out, work it out, work it out now. Shake it up, shake it up, shake it up now —
Lee: They go, where else? To Freaknik. Throughout the video there are girls in bikinis and short skirts twerking and dancing with guys. And guys dancing and singing with Uncle Luke in the background.
Luke: You know, so we kind of gave people a picture of what Freaknik was but it really wasn’t. Is what I basically turned (ph) into.
Lee: People crowned Luke the king of Freaknik, and his song “Work It Out,” will set a new tone for the festival. People coming down to Freaknik to get freaky.
Archival Recording: (Inaudible).
Lee: And over the next few years attendance skyrocketed again, reaching over 200,000 people.
Luke: Just imagine people riding down the streets, jumping out they car dancing like they’re in the club party when they put on a Luke song.
Lee: Every Freaknik, Uncle Luke would host some of the craziest parties and concerts in Piedmont Park. The freakiness was pretty on-brand for Uncle Luke who was one of the earliest artists to have explicit language about sex in his rap songs.
Luke: We were banned off of MTV, banned off of BET because of what you saw in the videos. And we were banned in record stores, we couldn’t do concerts.
Lee: But that didn’t stop Luke who years earlier had taken his fight for free speech all the way to the Supreme Court. In fact, it made him fight harder to make the kind of music that he wanted to make.
Luke: You know everybody had their own different fight whether it was against the music, the culture, what they was seeing on the videos and what they knew America was going to be today. I said that back then every time I would give an interview I said, “This is not about explicit lyrics, this is a culture movement that a lot people have a problem with.”
You know, they don’t want white kids listening to Black music, embracing Black culture. Because if you embrace Black culture then Black people will be your friend. You know, this is an attack on what they want society to be.
Lee: But the backlash to the music coincided with the backlash to Freaknik itself. As the festival grew it would essentially shut down the city for three days and residents and police were growing more and more frustrated. And at the same time, city leaders were working on a different event, one that would take Atlanta center stage and be the downfall of Freaknik.
Hobson: You can’t talk about Freaknik without talking about the Olympics.
Lee: When we come back, we look at the fall of Freaknik and the legacy the festival left behind. Stick with us.
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Lee: While Freaknik was growing through the ’90s another massive event in Atlanta was taking shape and the city decided the two were not compatible.
Archival Recording: The International Olympic Committee has awarded the 1996 Olympic Games to the City of Atlanta.
(CHEERING)
Lee: In 1990 Atlanta was selected to host the 1996 Olympics.
Hobson: Once Atlanta wins the Olympic Games you see these calculated steps to where the city is building itself up to showcase itself to Europe, to Asia, to Africa to promote commerce.
Lee: Historian Maurice Hobson says city officials felt this was a turning a point for Atlanta. It had recently been named the most violent city in America and decades of White Flight had taken a toll on the cities coffers.
Hobson: So what happens is the Olympics becomes an opportunity to bring back businesses and white people, bring back a tax base. What I call the “Olympification of Atlanta”.
Lee: Mayor Maynard Jackson and the city government rolled out plans to clean the streets and revamp Atlanta’s image as a respectable city for businesses and tourists. But Maurice says these plans had consequences.
Hobson: Once Atlanta wins the Olympic Games the first thing that is built on-time and under budget is 1,000 bed jail to host the homeless. You see the erection of barriers on the sides of the interstates. They say they were sound barriers but it was really so that the world wouldn’t see the poverty in Atlanta because Atlanta, buy and large, has the highest impoverished population in the United States, has the highest drop-out rate, has the highest predatory lending practices.
So what’s going on here is the Olympics becomes this opportunity to get rid of low income, no income people who in the context of Atlanta and the American South were Black people.
Lee: By 1992 Freaknik came up against the “Olympification of Atlanta,” and the Rodney King verdict.
Hobson: Atlanta was one of the cities that erupted. There was an actual rebellion, or a riot, an insurrection that took place in Atlanta where I mean like 10,000 college-aged kids and locals were downtown and demanded Maynard Jackson, like you need to put a stop to this. Like, how could you let this happen? And so there was a major fallout.
Atlanta was hell-bent on getting a return on investment for the billion dollars that it had put into the city to franchise it for world consumption. And then you got college Black kids showing up trying to tear up everything. That’s a tension there, and that tension made my generation feel that Maynard Jackson had grown fat off of working-class and poor Black people who elected him.
But you ever wonder why in Outkast song “Git up, git out and git something,” Cameron Gipp says “and crooked ass Jackson got the whole country thinking that my city’s a big lick for ’96”. That early Outkast and Goodie Mob was very critical of the “Olympification of Atlanta”.
And so you can’t talk about Freaknik without talking about the Olympics.
Archival Recording: Got the whole country thinking that my city is he big lick for ’96, ’94, Big Gipp, Goodie Mo, Outkast, a vision from the past —
Lee: As tensions in the city were rising, Freaknik was getting wilder and more out of control. Sharon Toomer, one of the original founders said that traffic alone was overwhelming. Exacerbating the city’s already messy infrastructure, the remnants of redlining and segregation.
Toomer: A traffic nightmare for people who live in the city caused more problems for people who live there. Ambulances could get by. People missed their weddings.
Archival Recording: It’s just been an absolute mess. All the venues just gridlocked. Cruising is the name of the game for these kids, we took some shots of them cruising around the streets —
Hobson: I remember the absolute mayhem when they blocked the interstates and you had to figure out ways to get into Atlanta. Traffic jams for days on the interstates. I mean you were literally sitting on the interstate in like as a parking lot, it was like nobody, the whole city was locked. Nobody could get anywhere.
Archival Recording: And they’re everywhere hanging out of the automobiles. And they readily admit it, they are not here necessarily for the organized events, there’s as Donna (ph) told us at 5 o’clock, they are avoiding them like the plague. If the authorities have organized them, they want nothing to do with them. This is what they want to do, they want to sit on any flat plate surface (ph) —
Lee: And many Atlantans weren’t happy.
Archival Recording: It’s just absolute gridlock. Have never seen anything like it here on Northside Drive even during the Super Bowl.
Lee: Businesses started closing their doors to avoid the crowds, roads were blocked off, and the city beefed up police presence at the event.
Archival Recording: I’m having fun but I don’t like the police blocking off everything.
Archival Recording: ATL in the house.
Archival Recording: Police watched and sometimes directed traffic that was mostly gridlocked. So the students partied.
Archival Recording: Yo, what up?
Lee: By the mid-’90s Freaknik wasn’t just attracting young Black college students it was attracting a whole different element with no school affiliations. Some predators and criminals, all looking to take advantage of the festival’s fun, loose atmosphere.
Toomer: All the foolery started happening like ’93, ’94 and you just started to see criminal element that was just awful.
Lee: There were reports of illicit drug use, and fighting, and women in the crowds were being fondled or disrobed against their will, and in the worst cases, raped. Sharon says it was painful to hear the news about violence, sexual assault, and robbery during Freaknik. So far from the festival that she helped start.
Toomer: It wasn’t the Freaknik that it once was. That drew really horrible criminal, you know, all kinds of sexual assaults, stuff I couldn’t even get behind. Like I couldn’t condone that, there’s no event that trumps that kind of attack on our own.
Lee: By 1996, the year of the Olympics, all the bad press had stacked up and many of the residents both white and Black who used to turn a blind eye took a stance against Freaknik.
Hobson: Organizing groups, all kinds of organizing groups, protested. I mean there were Black folks, Black churches, there were regular working people who needed to get to work, they were like, we just don’t want to deal with all of the shenanigans that Freaknik brings about. But then you also had white groups (INAUDIBLE) they were all like protesting against, you know, Freaknik because taxpayers were having to foot the bills, you know, to kind of keep the city clean and safe, and crime was going up.
Lee: By 1997 Freaknik’s numbers started declining and two years later the city ordered the event shut down for good.
Hobson: We talk about Black Lives Matter now and the truth of the matter is that Black lives have never really mattered. And so it’s amazing how if you take a place like Jacksonville, Florida and every fall the University of Florida plays the University of Georgia and they call it the biggest cocktail party in the world, the world’s biggest cocktail party. It’s basically Freaknik for white people, is what it is.
Or you take like the Masters in Augusta, like that’s Freaknik for white people. And it’s just amazing how the political economy of a city will be like, well, we stand to make a whole lot of money with all these people coming here and spending money and whatever, what not, so we will relax laws to be able to accommodate them.
But that did not happen for Freaknik. So it becomes very clear on who city governments will see as problems and who they won’t see as problems. And that’s a big issue with Freaknik.
Toomer: It was an economic up for the city for three days. And so, it just never made sense that the city could not get past its hard line and hard approach on how to capitalize on that. And particularly in leading up to the ’96 Olympics, like a test run of how to manage.
Lee: Sharon Toomer says she tried to get the city of Atlanta and even corporate sponsors on board to do exactly what Maurice is talking about. Relax the laws to accommodate Freaknik in a much safer way, but no one would listen. No one actually cared to listen.
Toomer: We presented to Coca-Cola, North Avenue, walked in there with a full proposal. We had what we thought were their ears, but it became very apparent that they were just humoring us, both the business community, Coca-Cola, and I name them because they were the big ones. And then, of course, City Hall. So, they seemed to just be toying with us. And they really did railroad some solid planning around that event. And it looked like their strategy was no strategy other than make it a horrible place to be during that time.
Lee: Sharon says that all these years later when she thinks about what could have been, she still misses the best of what Freaknik represented.
Toomer: Those Black students who go to predominantly white schools. It’s a loss for them, because this is the one time in the year where they can go be with their own people. That I miss.
Lee: Even though Freaknik is over, you can still see and feel its impact on the city today. The freedom and unity of Freaknik is part of why people like Maurice, Sharon and Kenny decided to put down roots and build a life in the Black Mecca. Freaknik brought them to the party, but Atlanta gave them a home.
Hobson: But that’s the legacy of Freaknik, is it was a place where folks could come and convene and create. And even though it may have caused problems, I think the city of Atlanta, in terms of what it does for Black culture, I think it has been enhanced in better by having events like Freaknik in it.
Toomer: There’s something about Atlanta, Georgia, and I don’t think Freaknik could have happened in D.C. I don’t think that I could happen in California. It was Atlanta for so many reasons. Freaknik was for and about us in a city that we felt a kinship to and a connection to.
Burns: And that’s the thing about Atlanta, it’s like, everybody is from everywhere, if you look at like the great migrations of Black folks up north, they came from the south. When you look at, you know, any child who went to a college, a university and grew roots in that town and stayed, Atlanta is that place where you could come and find your dreams and come recreate your narrative. And my generation made that possible. We were the ones buying land. We were the ones like really putting family and community on the forefront of what we were resurrecting here, you know?
Lee: In the years since Freaknik ended there have been attempts to bring it back, like in 2919 when Atlanta put on a more organized and sanitized Freaknik at Atlanta’s Lakewood Amphitheater.
Archival Recording: If you believe it or not, it’s been 20 years since the original Freaknik and promoters are bringing back on Saturday at Lakewood Amphitheater. Organizers say this one will have a more grown-up feel, as she just mentioned.
Lee: But it wasn’t the same. You could find events and parties all throughout the country named Freaknik, as a nod to the original. But, also drawing on some of its demons. Just this year two people were shot and killed at a Freaknik festival in east-central Georgia. It seems like there’s always an effort to bring back the real Freaknik Atlanta, but Kenny says its time has passed.
Burns: It was a moment in time and some things need to be left in that era, in that moment of time. So many people got married, had relationships, had children, grew new families. You know, I don’t think that will be ever the situation. There’s too much access. People aren’t going to be as interested because it’s not, you know, Instagram and social media in the way people, and then you have more festivals. Back then there weren’t any festivals for Black people. So, Freaknik made sense to congregate and create this magic.
Lee: Maybe Freaknik can never be recreated and maybe that’s OK. Because as Uncle Luke, the king of Freaknik says, its legacy lives on in more ways than one.
How do you think Freaknik changed the culture? Obviously, in so many ways it was a reflection of our communities and young people and what was going on at the time in the culture. But, how do you think Freaknik changed the culture and changed America?
Luke: Man, it gave more people and more artists a sense of what we can say what the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) we want to say, we do what we want to do. We can really feel free and open, our music, our culture, open this up to the entire world.
Lee: So these kids right now, if you go to a club, there’s not a lot of dancing, like the way we remember dancing. The dance floor’s packed, you just got to slide in and it’s hot and it’s just everybody’s getting it in. How do you describe Freaknik for those young folks who have no context, how do you describe what Freaknik was?
Luke: Half of them are Freaknik babies. Half of them are Freaknik babies. They’re Freaknik babies. And so, you know, you see these things, you know, like right now today, City of Miami Beach putting a curfew on Black College Spring Break Weekend.
Look at the videos and they got the videos, you know, the girls, you know, they’re twerking. Well, we didn’t call it twerking, we called it, doing the brown (ph) and dropping it like it’s hot. You know, so they gave it a nice little cute Drake name, twerk, and so that’s what they’re doing.
So when you see twerking and you see the dancing, that’s the best way I can describe Freaknik. I always post these pictures on my Instagram, you know, the throwback pictures and you know, the girls. People be like in the comments somebody was actually, damn that looks like my grandma. Damn, that looks like my momma. And then I would go in the comments and be like, that probably is.
Lee: That’s crazy.
If you have pictures or memories from Freaknik, and make sure, of course, that they are family-friendly pictures, please, please post them to Twitter, Instagram or Facebook and tag us, using the handle @IntoAmericaPod. We’d love to check them out.
Into America is produced by Sojouner Ahebee, Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Aaron Dalton, Max Jacob, Olivia Richard and Joshua Sirotiak. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. Special thanks this week to Erisa Apantaku for the editorial support. I’m Trymaine Lee. We’ll be back next Thursday. Stay freaky y’all.
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