What to know about Juneteenth, Secretary of State Blinken visits China: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: America marks Juneteenth

What to know about Juneteenth. Plus, USA TODAY Senior Reporter Jessica Guynn talks about Black history in Silicon Valley and the fight to preserve it, 2024 presidential candidates continue to differ in how they discuss former President Donald Trump's indictment, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits China, and USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise looks at whether climate change is ruining beaches.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Monday, the 19th of June 2023. Today, America commemorates Juneteenth. Plus, how Black Americans are fighting to preserve their history in Silicon Valley, and we look at the role climate change is playing on the country's beaches.

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Today is Juneteenth. When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, to free Black Americans, it took time for a word to spread. And it initially could not be enforced in secessionist states still under Confederate control, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It wasn't until two years later that Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas to proclaim that more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were free. Today is the second year that Juneteenth, also known as America's second Independence Day, will be commemorated as a federally recognized holiday.

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Black Americans are fighting to preserve their forgotten history in Silicon Valley. I spoke with USA TODAY Senior Reporter Jessica Guynn about one man, Roy Clay, Sr., and about what's being done to preserve stories like his. Welcome back to 5 Things, Jessica.

Jessica Guynn:

Thank you so much for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So first, can you just tell us a little bit about Roy Clay, Sr. and his impressive Silicon Valley career?

Jessica Guynn:

Well, Roy K. Clay, Sr. certainly had a fascinating career. His first job in the Bay Area was at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he created software that would map radiation in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. And he worked there under Ed Teller. He was later recruited to Hewlett-Packard by co-founder Dave Packard. And at HP he was a key figure in the development of the company's first computer division and in the development of the company's first computer. Later, he ran his own consulting firm and he helped Kleiner Perkins make investments in companies that went on to be huge names in technology, including Intel. And then he finished his career with his own company that manufactured electrical safety test equipment.

Taylor Wilson:

And Jessica, he was an early innovator of so-called flextime in the workplace. This is a pretty revolutionary thing. What can you tell us about that?

Jessica Guynn:

Well, in his memoir, he said he was the first in the US to design flexible work schedules for his employees at HP, and this would've been in the late 1960s. And he did it because he liked playing a round of golf before work. So I looked into it and he in fact was in the Vanguard. HP, which is widely lauded for "The HP Way," didn't introduce flextime until the 1970s. And his flextime policy was super popular with his employees and was also a great recruiting tactic for him. It also got him into hot water with HP's other founder, Bill Hewlett, because Bill Hewlett's son worked for Roy Clay, Sr. And he blabbed to his dad that he was playing golf before work and Bill Hewlett was not happy. But he later realized the benefits of that kind of out-of-the-box thinking.

Taylor Wilson:

But you also wrote that he was a diversity leader when he left to form his own consulting business. How did he help champion diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Jessica Guynn:

He was a diversity leader decades before diversity was a thing. At HP, he recruited top talent from Stanford and from HBCUs in his consulting business. And at his own startup, ROD-L, he hired men and women from all backgrounds. At the time, ROD-L was one of very few tech companies in Silicon Valley founded by an African American, and it was one of the largest employers of Black professionals. And Roy Clay, Sr. said that he did it because that diverse range of voices and perspectives gave his company a competitive edge.

Taylor Wilson:

And what other racial barriers or flat-out racism did Roy Clay, Sr. face throughout his career?

Jessica Guynn:

He experienced many racist incidents during his lifetime and career. His mantra was something his mother instilled in him, that he was never going to let racism stop him. When he graduated with honors with a degree in mathematics, he tried to get a job as an engineer at McDonnell Aircraft. But when he showed up, they turned him away and told him they didn't have any jobs for professional Negroes. So he just kept applying and eventually he landed a job.

Taylor Wilson:

Wow. So we've talked about this remarkable man, Jessica, obviously just one of many stories as part of Black history in Silicon Valley. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how Black Americans are fighting to preserve this up-to-now kind of lost history.

Jessica Guynn:

Reporting on Roy Clay, Sr. made me really think of the Black women at NASA whose legacy wasn't really fully recognized until the release of Hidden Figures. And there are a lot of hidden figures in Silicon Valley to this day. And Black Americans are determined to record the history of how they contributed to the formation of the tech industry. Roy Clay, Sr. was one of them with his memoir that was published last year. Kathy Cotton - who started out in Silicon Valley in the '70s and worked as a recruiter, an HR administrator for Motorola and HP - went back to school at Stanford to learn how to make documentaries, and made the film A Place at the Table, the story of the African American pioneers of Silicon Valley. What's more, there's a group that puts on a Black Legends awards ceremony each year and they recognize and honor the Black pioneers in tech. And that's another place where people can go to learn more about who these people are.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Jessica Guynn here talking about a very powerful story. You can find a link to the full story in today's show notes. Thanks for your time, Jessica.

Jessica Guynn:

Thank you so much for having me.

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Taylor Wilson:

Several of former president Donald Trump's rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination continued yesterday to attack the Justice Department instead of Trump over his indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott told Fox News that the DOJ is hunting Republicans while it protects Democrats. And former vice president, Mike Pence, told NBC's Meet the Press that he plans to get rid of top justice department officials if elected president, something echoed by Scott. Pence, though, continued to dodge questions about whether he would pardon Trump. Meanwhile, Trump's former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CBS's Face The Nation yesterday that the case was one entirely of Trump's own making. And another 2024 GOP candidate, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson on ABC's This Week, rejected the argument from some of his fellow Republicans that the Justice Department has been weaponized.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken began a trip to China over the weekend as officials in the two countries worked to navigate tensions. The US said that during a six-hour meeting yesterday, Blinken secured a visit to Washington by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang. But both sides said advancement on the issues that divide them remains a work in progress. And the Chinese foreign ministry said the US China relationship is at its lowest point since its establishment. Blinken is the highest-level American official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office. He was expected to possibly meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping today as part of the trip.

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Is climate change ruining beaches? From rotting seaweed, to sharks closer to shore, experts say the beach experience is changing. Many of those effects are thanks to rising sea levels and warming oceans. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, announced last week that global ocean temperatures hit a record high in May, the second consecutive month where ocean temperatures broke a record. I spoke with USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise for more. Howdy, Beth.

Elizabeth Weise:

Hey, how you doing?

Taylor Wilson:

Good, thanks. So you write that climate change is changing what the summer beach experience looks like. You mentioned a bunch of different aspects of this. But Beth, I want to start with sharks.

Elizabeth Weise:

Because why shouldn't you start with sharks?

Taylor Wilson:

Why not? There have been some really devastating high-profile shark attacks already this year. I think to the video in Egypt, particularly nightmarish. Beth, should we be more concerned about shark attacks than we've been in the past? And what's the impact of climate change here?

Elizabeth Weise:

The thing that's kind of fascinating about shark attacks is that, at least in the US, the actual number of attacks hasn't really been rising. But, sharks sightings are way up. And what NOAA thinks is happening is that as ocean temperatures rise... So algae and plankton are in the ocean and they have a certain temperature they like, and when it's too hot, they move where it's cooler. And the fish that eat them follow that, and the sharks, which are the apex predators follow all of that. And so what we're seeing is as ocean temperatures warm, the sharks are... They're in different places than they have been in the past, and they've also come back because we've done a really good job of stopping overfishing of them. And so the population has rebounded.

The problem is that... so there's more sharks and they're on the move, and they're moving into places where there happened to be more humans. And shark-human interactions just really never go well. They're especially seen on the West Coast as they're kind of moving up into beaches that didn't used to see a lot of great whites. And to a certain extent, because drones got so cheap, we send these drones out over the ocean and people are suddenly seeing that, "Oh wow, there are sharks there."

Taylor Wilson:

All right. So maybe less daunting and more just gross, are these mass fish die-offs that are smelling up beaches. Will these events happen more frequently in the future, Beth?

Elizabeth Weise:

They will. I mean, we just had a big one in Texas. They're natural. They've happened for forever. But again, as temperatures warm... So hotter water holds less oxygen, fish breathe the oxygen that's in the water, and when the water gets too hot, there's not enough oxygen for them to breathe and they die off. What has kind of historically been the pattern is that it has to be in a place that is relatively shallow, and you get above average temperatures, especially over 70 degrees, the oxygen content in the water drops and then the fish die, and then they wash ashore. And then it's just really, really gross. And as temperatures rise, again, you can never say any one single event is caused by climate change, but what this does is it increases the odds that we will have similar events. So yeah, more over time.

Taylor Wilson:

And one of the kind of silent killers in the ocean are rip currents. How does climate change impact these, Beth?

Elizabeth Weise:

And this one was a surprise to me because yeah, rip currents are scary. I mean, I grew up hearing them called riptides, but it turns out they're actually rip currents. NOAA and others are looking at this. So currents are caused by waves. The more heat you add to a system, the more erratic it gets, because heat is energy. So we're adding heat to the ocean, so we're getting more wave action. Also, we're adding heat to the atmosphere and stronger winds cause more waves. And all of these combines to mean that you're getting rip currents or you're getting stronger rip currents. It's not that everybody's suddenly going to get sucked out to sea by a rip current, but things are starting to change. And so a beach you've gone to for 20 years, things could start changing. And especially with a rip current, that's problematic or maybe it's stronger than you're used to it being.

Taylor Wilson:

And finally, you wrote about these seaweed blobs. What are they, and is climate change to blame here?

Elizabeth Weise:

Climate change is one of multiple factors that are impacting this. So this is this kind of brown seaweed, which is really ecologically important, that kind of grows in the Sargasso Sea, what's happening is - and this is an interesting one - as the water grows more nutrient rich, and especially in the Sargasso Sea, that's partly because there's been winds over the Saharan Desert that throw dust up into the air that comes down in the ocean, and it's got iron and phosphates and things that cause the seaweed to grow more. And it's warmer so the seaweed grows faster. And you get these, I mean, we're talking enormous rafts of this stuff. Which is kind of fine when it's out in the ocean, but when it rolls up on shore and starts to rot, I mean, I grew up near the ocean and the smell of seaweed actually smells good to me, but tons and tons of it rotting, it's not so good.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah, it's tough. All right. Well, Elizabeth Weise, always a pleasure. Thanks so much.

Elizabeth Weise:

You're so welcome. Take care.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe, and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And if you have any comments, you can reach us at podcasts at usatoday.com. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Juneteenth is here, Blinken visits China: 5 Things podcast