THE FREEDOM FREQUENCY
A Juneteenth Telephone Game
#FreedomFrequency
#JuneteenthTelephoneGame
On Juneteenth 2025, STAR SYSTEMS launches "The Freedom Frequency: a Juneteenth Telephone Game" – visionary Toshi Reagon's transformative digital campaign that traces how essential truths about Black Freedom travel from intimate (analogue) conversations to public (digital) declarations. Beginning with a core message shared voice-to-voice among artists, activists, educators, healers, family and friends, this sixteen-day social experiment documents how each participant receives, interprets, and retransmits freedom's meaning through their own understanding. As the message moves from private calls to public posts across social platforms, each transmission becomes a testament to collective memory and media literacy in our disinformation-saturated era. Culminating on July 4th, "The Freedom Frequency" reveals how Black stories survive, adapt, and persist as they travel from voice to voice, heart to heart, screen to screen, exposing both the resilience of our truths and our responsibility as carriers of freedom's flame.
Share your own message
Download this shareable image and fill in the blank “We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest Until __________________."
Post it publically!
Use the hashtags #FreedomFrequency, #JuneteenthTelephoneGame
When Juneteenth became a national holiday in 2021, it felt like a very singular response to the massive call for racial justice that hit the ground in 2020. It made Toshi go back to source, to 1865 and the years prior, and start investigating what it meant for the message declaring the end of enslavement to reach Galveston, Texas two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Imagine the journey of the message moving its way mile by mile, person to person, community to community. What did it feel like? What did folks do? How did the message make meaning as it traveled and was received? What words were actually said??
We’re launching The Freedom Frequency to reclaim how truth about Black freedom moves, reconnecting intimate, spoken memory with resilient digital storytelling in an age of disinformation. This experiment honors Juneteenth by centering organic, intergenerational transmissions of freedom, underscoring how our collective stories survive and evolve across media. Toshi Reagon’s deep roots in civil‑rights traditions (through musicians like her parents in The Freedom Singers) and her groundbreaking artistic practice give her the authority and insight to steward this project with cultural clarity and spiritual resonance
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
You Are Called to Carry Freedom Forward
The INVITATION
You made it here one of two ways: either you received a call from Toshi directly or from someone who did, so you are in the original game of telephone. OR you saw a post that led you here. Either way, we are so glad you are here! HERE ARE YOUR NEXT STEPS:
Receive a call from Toshi or someone on her phone tree - June 19, 2025 through July 4th, 2025 — Absorb the message about freedom and Juneteenth.
HOW IT WORKS
01
Hold it in your heart — Do not write anything down. Trust your memory and intuition.
02
Pass it on — Please call at least two people and share what you heard, as you remember it. Please ask them to call at least two people and do the same. This is how the message spreads. Send them to this site.
03
Post it publicly — Share your retelling on Instagram and any other platforms. You can make a video and post it with your message, you can download the shareable message and write the remainder of the message in the caption. Be as creative or simple as you want to be - just include the message and include #FreedomFrequency, #JuneteenthTelephoneGame, tag @toshireagon, AND toshireagon.com/juneteenth to encourage folks to find out more/get involved. Tag two others who you believe would visit the site and share the message of FREEDOM.
04
Help us follow the message — While you’re here fill in your email and zip code below so we can see how far it spreads!
05
If You Received a Call...
Step one is coming here. Congrats!
01
02
03
Post it publicly — Share your retelling on Instagram and any other platforms. You can make a video and post it with your message, you can download the shareable message and write the remainder of the message in the caption. Be as creative or simple as you want to be - just include the message and include #FreedomFrequency, #JuneteenthTelephoneGame, tag @toshireagon, AND toshireagon.com/juneteenth to encourage folks to find out more/get involved. Tag two others who you believe would visit the site and share the message of FREEDOM.
04
Help us follow the message — While you’re here fill in your email and zip code below so we can see how far it spreads!
If You Saw it Online...
STAY UP TO DATE ON THE RELAY
FAQ
Do you really only want me to reach out to 2 people?
Yes. You are very welcome to call or tag as many folks into this as you want, but if you commit to contacting two people, you are more likely to do it and I will be so happy.
Wait, so I call two people and ask them to do what?
Exactly what I am asking you to do. You can even cut and paste this: WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CANNOT REST UNTIL ______________. But please remember to ask your two people to ask two people, etc.
Is this only for Black folks?
The message is emanating from Black people but can/should be spread to any/every one.
Am I only inviting folks who live in the States?
Feel free to engage people who live anywhere in the world.
WHAT DO I POST?
You will post the downloadable message or one you create that says
“WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CANNOT REST UNTIL__________. "
Share with your people, with the tags, hashtags and this site link.
Is this like a secret mission?
No! You absolutely can add when you post the message and say you’re participating in this freedom experiment. Please do!
Feel free to point people to toshireagon.com/juneteeth if they want to learn more or get involved.
Toshi, why are you doing this?
The details of our freedom matter to me and I realize how mediated those details continue to be.
"We Who Believe In Freedom Cannot Rest Until It Comes"
These are the memorialized words of freedom fighter, Ella Baker, excerpted from Ella’s Song, written by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon - Toshi’s mom. It was performed by Dr. Reagon’s acapella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Please learn more about Ella Josephine Baker here. Visit Dr. Reagon’s website here.
SPREAD THE WORD
Download the image below and post it on Instagram, TikTok, or anywhere you gather with others. Use #JuneteenthTelephoneGame to help us track the ripple. The more people who join, the more powerful this becomes.
The Freedom Frequency: a Juneteenth Telephone Game is part of Star Systems,
funded by the Mellon Foundation.
