George Washington privately condemned slavery while actively holding hundreds of people in enslavement. He championed gradual emancipation plans while scheming to keep the people he enslaved from accessing them. He ruthlessly pursued a woman who escaped his enslavement and then emancipated the slaves he owned outright in his will. Washington’s…
One hundred years ago, Dr. Carter G. Woodson created and launched the inaugural Negro History Week after his professors told him that Black people didn’t have a history worth studying. Negro History Week built on the success of Douglass Day and quickly spread through Black communities in the United States.…
Reed Peggram, born in Boston in 1914, a gay Black man in a world that put up barriers to his success, excelled at Harvard before heading to a Europe on the brink of war. In Europe he fell in love with a Danist artist, and despite pleas from everyone in…
Charles C. Diggs, Jr., founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, spent 25 years in Congress, pushing for change, on issues from segregation in commercial aviation to home-rule for the residents of Washington, DC, to the anti-apartheid movement. His legislative accomplishments were overshadowed by his downfall, and today his story doesn’t…
When All in the Family premiered in January 1971, CBS was nervous enough about the content that they added an advisory message at the beginning. Despite their fears, the show was a success, quickly garnering both awards and top Nielsen ratings. All in the Family not only changed television in…
When All in the Family premiered in January 1971, CBS was nervous enough about the content that they added an advisory message at the beginning. Despite their fears, the show was a success, quickly garnering both awards and top Nielsen ratings. All in the Family not only changed television in…
When It’s a Wonderful Life was first released, it wasn’t a box office hit, but it did draw the attention of the FBI and its investigation into the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry (COMPIC). The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) didn’t end up doing anything with the FBI’s…
Americans love their coffee; according to the Fall 2025 National Coffee Data Trends Report, 66% of adult Americans drink coffee every day, averaging three cups per day. This devotion to the caffeinated beverage is nothing new. Even before Bostonians dumped over 90,000 pounds of tea in the harbor, Americans were…
Global rum sales are expected to reach nearly $28 billion USD by the year 2033, making it one of the ten most popular alcoholic beverages in the world. In this episode we look at the early history of rum, how its invention and production were intertwined with the transatlantic slave…
New Orleans is known for its unique cuisine that blends and highlights the many cultural roots of the city and its residents. The history of food distribution in New Orleans is just as unique within the American landscape, relying heavily on public food systems, both street vendors and municipally-run public…
In 1912, wealthy Savannahian Juliette Gordon Low supposedly called her cousin and exclaimed: “Come right over! I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, for all of America, and for the world.” That something would become the Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization that throughout its history struggled to…
Zoe Anderson Norris, known to her friends in the Ragged Edge Klub as the Queen of Bohemia, was born in Kentucky in 1860, moved to Wichita, Kansas, with her first husband, and then to New York City, where she forged a career for herself as a journalist and novelist, eventually…
Dr. Marguerite Phillips Dorsey Cartwright, born May 17, 1910, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a journalist, sociologist, educator, and actress, who served as a correspondent for the United Nations, attended and wrote about both the Bandung Conference and the All-African People's Conference, and was appointed to the Provisional Council of the…
The feminist anti-rape movement began in the late 1960s at the height of women’s liberation. As rape crisis centers relied on federal grants aimed at prosecution of those committing sexual violence, feminists worried about the conservatizing influence of those funds, and Black women in particular were not well-served by the…
The First Amendment to the US Constitution says that Congress cannot make law abridging the freedom of speech, but by as early at 1798, Congress was restricting immigration to the country on the basis of the ideological beliefs of the people who wanted to immigrate. While the reasons for restrictions…
Both Abigail Adams and Benjamin Franklin took trips in England to trace their family histories, and they weren’t alone among 18th century Americans, many of whom took a keen interest in genealogy and family connections. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Karin Wulf, Director and Librarian of the John…
Before American independence and the Bill of Rights promising religious freedom, the American colonies were English territory governed by English religious law that mandated worship according to the Book of Common Prayer. Even Maryland, which had been founded as a place for Catholics to worship freely, was majority Protestant and…
In August of 1893, Madeleine Pollard sued Congressman William C.P. Breckinridge of Kentucky for breach of promise, claiming that he had promised to marry her but then had married another woman. By the time of the trial, Pollard and the much-older Breckinridge had been involved in an affair for nearly…
On the slave ships that sailed between Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and the West Coast of Africa from the 16th through the 19th Centuries, the crews included not just white sailors but also Black mariners, including a significant number of crewmen who were themselves enslaved. These enslaved mariners were not…
Ruth Reynolds, born in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1916 to a strict Methodist family, may have seemed an unlikely ally to the cause of Puerto Rican independence, but she devoted her life to what she saw as her “sacred and patriotic duty” as an American to convincing…
In March 1972, Selma James distributed a pamphlet that declared: “If we raise kids, we have a right to a living wage. . . WE DEMAND WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK. All housekeepers are entitled to wages. (Men too).” Soon it was a global movement, with Wages for Housework branches in the…
Amelia Jenks Bloomer was many things: writer and publisher, public speaker, temperance reformer, advocate for women’s rights and dress reform, and adoptive mother. She was not the inventor of the trousers for women that came to bear her name – bloomers – although she wore them and wrote about them…
My guest today is Dr. Martha S. Jones (https://www.marthasjones.com/), the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, professor of history, and a professor at the SNF Agora Institute at the Johns Hopkins University and author of The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (https://bookshop.org/a/34046/9781541601000). In this book, Prof. Jones researches…
The Universal Negro Improvement Association is often most closely associated with Marcus Garvey, but from the beginning, the work of women was essential to the development of the organization. Amy Ashwood co-founded the UNIA with Garvey, and it was her connections and capital that launched the Negro World newspaper, but…
