Episode
Angelique Roche on First Freedom - The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth
- Published
- Jan 29, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3311
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Summary
Friend, put your phone down. Quit doomscrolling. You owe it to yourself and everyone else who came before you. It’s time to get in the fight, and First Freedom: The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth by Angélique Roché, Alvin Epps, Millicent Monroe, and Bex Glendining is a comic designed to inject some serious motivation into your social media-addled, catatonic body. The fight may be new to you, but it's been raging for centuries. That’s not a despairing thought; it’s an activating one, and once you stand on the shoulders of the heroes that came before, you’ll find the perspective required to block the hateful from gaining any more ground than they already have. As a comic book reader, you already have all the tools and knowledge to resist fascism. On this week’s podcast, we chat with journalist, comic creator, and podcaster Angélique Roché. Once approached to write First Freedom: The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth, she threw herself into an intense research phase. We discuss the stress and excitement of the process, and the motivation she secured in telling Dr. Opal Lee’s life story. Juneteenth was only recognized as a national holiday in 2021. It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Day was signed into law in 1983. It never would have happened without Dr. Opal Lee and the lessons she learned from other warriors over her extraordinary lifetime. First Freedom: The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth arrives in comic book shops and bookstores, thanks to Oni Press, on February 10th. Make sure you follow Angélique Roché via her website, Bluesky, and Instagram. This Week's Sponsors The Future is Calling! 2000 AD is the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, with new issues published every single week! Every 32-page issue of 2000 AD brings you the best in sci-fi and horr…