But for now it's time to move on to our Way Black History Fact. And I'm going to get through this pretty quickly because there's another thing I want to share for Today's Way Black History Fact. But Today's Way Black History Fact sponsored by Underground Beach Club From the Streets to the Beach. For the latest in beachwub, visit Underground Beachclub dot com and I'm gonna share a bit from EJI or the Equal Justice Initiative. Shout out to
Brian Stevenson. He's one of our heroes. We love this guy, and of course the Equal Justice Initiative is his whole thing, so check that out on your own. Today we're going to discuss the path to citizenship for Indigenous people. And we've been champing at the bit because we really want to have an episode where we're able to dedicate some time and some space to our Indigenous brothers and sisters.
And we live in a part of the world where there's we have access to them, so we're working those angles, but for now we're going to share this. The concept of United States citizenship was based on the assumption that the the US had the right to claim the territory that Indigenous people had inhabited for thousands of years, and it was disregarded Indigenous understandings of belonging and membership. Sorry,
it disregarded Indigenous understandings of belonging in membership. Beginning in nineteen sorry seventeen ninety, the First Congress granted citizenship rights, including the right to vote, whole public office, apply for a government job, be tried by a jury, and pursued life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, only to free white people. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in eighteen sixty six, declared that all persons born or naturalized in the US are citizens.
The provision granted citizenship to many newly freed Black Americans, but it excluded Indians not taxed, which meant that ninety percent of Native Americans were denied citizenship. Despite that, twelve thousand Native Americans served as snipers, code talkers check out look up the code talkers, You're definitely going to want to know about them, and scouts for the US Army
during World War One. Shortly after the war and did Congress pass legislation that granted citizenship to all non citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States.
When the Indian Citizenship Act was signed into law on June second, nineteen twenty four, nearly half of all Native Americans were not US citizens, but the new law did not provide full voting rights to Indigenous people, who were barred from voting in Arizona, New Mexico, and New Mexico by state laws that remained in effect until nineteen forty eight. States continued to use tactics like poll taxes to prevent voting by both Native Americans and Black Americans until the
passage of the Voting Rights Act nineteen sixty five. So watch this. I want you to jump in west this. This is actually their country. We currently are broadcasting from unseated ancestral lands of the Akima Odam peoples. Still took until sixty five for them both.
I have never been comfortable with saying Native American, yeah, because that would not be what they are trying to people as native of a place they already occupied that you stole.
They didn't name it that, and then named it what you wanted to home Indian.
And because some people say Native American as opposed to Indian as a more respectful way to say it, both are to them have.
To be just as disrespecial.
Sure, come into my home, rename my home, and tell me where I can sit, sleep at the table.
Yeah, that's funny. It's a really really crazy true. But we definitely want to have more conversations like this and we're working on developing those relationships to the degree that we can have. Like some people aren't really comfortable in the radio broadcast space, but anyway, it's coming. And also before we go, I want to make sure that we take a moment to let everyone know that this is the thirty five year anniversary of the Central Park five,
now known as the Exonerated Five. You can watch their movie on Netflix when they see us one time for repudiation