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Black voters in a bus holding up Black Votes Matter signs.
This month at Making Contact, and all year round, we are excited to honor, celebrate and recount the stories of Black people and Black heritage in America. Storytelling allows us the opportunity to uncover the lives, the hope, and the people who built a better world for all of us. Too often these stories are lost or forgotten in time.
Today, take some time to listen to some of those stories:
1.Tulsa & Black Wall Street
Our most recent three-part series tells the story of the Black Tulsans who built Greenwood, the white supremacy attack that destroyed the neighborhood, and how the community built back to hit its economic heyday as the Black Wall Street decades later.
2. Giving Bayard Rustin His Flowers
Bayard Rustin is a forgotten hero of the civil rights movement. The architect of the 1963 March on Washington, Rustin’s intersection perspective on race, class, gender, and sexuality worked towards a more inclusive society.
3. Denial of the Funk: The Impact of Racism on our Nation’s Health
America doesn’t have a race problem. In reality, there have been catastrophes visited upon Black people. Catastrophes visited on Indigenous brothers and sisters. Catastrophes visited on Latino brothers and sisters. Catastrophes visited on working people. Catastrophes visited on women of all colors. In this episode, we hear a talk from Dr. Cornel West on race in America.
4. Melissa Harris-Perry: Confronting Stereotypes of the Black Woman
The mammy, the angry black female, and the hyper-sexual woman are just some of the stereotypes that have been pushed onto Black women and continue to this day to permeate through pop culture. In this show, we dissect the way these stereotypes limit Black women from being seen as whole people.
5. I Am Not Your Negro: James Baldwin
The documentary I Am Not Your Negro, is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. This episode discusses this film that questions black representation in Hollywood and challenges the very definition of what America stands for.
6. Black History Month – Say it LOUD!
This previous Black History Month show celebrates Black history in America through the voices that changed this country’s culture, politics, and entertainment.
7. Black Women In History
Black women helped build America, and Black women are constantly fighting to build a better America that gives themselves and their families the opportunity to thrive. Here, we visit their often-forgotten stories.
8. A History of Traditional Root Healing
Natural remedies might be a thing developed in the past, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to discount their effectiveness in modern times. Plant and herbal healing has a well documented impact across the world and across America. We explore their role in Black American communities.
9. Remembering Fred Hampton
In an infamous moment in Chicago’s history and politics, over a dozen policemen burst into Fred Hampton’s apartment, killing Hampton and fellow Black Panther Mark Clark and brutalizing the other occupants. Our radio adaptation of the film The Murder of Fred Hampton, produced by filmmakers Mike Gray and Howard Alk, provides a glimpse into the life of Hampton and the Illinois Black Panther Party.
