In 1906, entrepreneurs Ottawa Gurley and J.B. Stradford purchased parcels of government land in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They had dreams of building a thriving Black community, equipped with the same amenities and privileges available to whites. Dubbed Greenwood, it was promoted as a sanctuary where Black people could thrive without fear of racial discrimination. By ... Show More
Apr 2025
Listen Now: Don’t Cross Kat
Kat Torres has the insta-perfect life. She is rich, gorgeous and not ashamed to share it. Her posts about witchcraft and “alien baths” drew in over a million followers, all chasing the dream of a lifestyle like hers. But as she gathers more followers around her, the secrets benea ... Show More
5m 56s
Jan 2025
Listen Now: We Came to the Forest
Vienna is working a delivery job when she hears about Cop City, a massive police training facility planned for Atlanta. She decides to join the activists trying to stop construction. When Vienna arrives in the South River Forest, she quickly finds a community, a cause and a love ... Show More
6m 2s
Sep 2023
Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, "Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap" (U California Press, 2023)
This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrification in Washington, DC. In Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap (U California Press, 2023), Tanya Maria Gol ... Show More
48m 21s
Mar 2023
Jovan Scott Lewis, "Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa (Duke UP, 2022), Jovan Scott Lewis retells the history and afterlife of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, from the post-Reconstruction migration of Black people to Oklahoma Indian Territory to contemporary efforts to reb ... Show More
51m 54s
May 2022
Sean J. Drake, "Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb" (U California Press, 2022)
In Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb (U California Press, 2022), sociologist Sean J. Drake addresses long-standing problems of educational inequality from a nuanced perspective, looking at how race and class intersect to affect mode ... Show More
55m 27s
Dec 2023
Michelle R. Scott, "T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners' Booking Association in Jazz-Age America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
Black vaudevillians and entertainers joked that T.O.B.A. stood for "tough on black artists." But the Theater Owner's Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) played a foundational role in the African American entertainment industry. T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners’ B ... Show More
58m 58s
Jul 2025
Shani Adia Evans, "We Belong Here: Gentrification, White Spacemaking, and a Black Sense of Place" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Although Portland, Oregon, is sometimes called “America’s Whitest city,” Black residents who grew up there made it their own. The neighborhoods of Northeast Portland, also called “Albina,” were a haven for and a hub of Black community life. But between 1990 and 2010, Albina chang ... Show More
32m 37s
Jun 2023
J. T. Roane, "Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place" (NYU Press, 2023)
In Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place (NYU Press, 2023), author J. T. Roane shows how working-class Black communities cultivated two interdependent modes of insurgent assembly--dark agoras--in twentieth century Philadelphia. He investigates the way ... Show More
1h 3m