America’s Black Capital
“America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy” chronicles how a center of Black excellence emerged amid virulent expressions of white nationalism as African Americans pushed back against Confederate ideology to create an extraordinary locus of achievement. Alongside author Dr. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, in this episode we examine the methods in which Black Atlanteans pushed for social,...
Tulsa’s Black History Saturday School
2021 marked the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre – a horrific attack white people waged against Greenwood, a once prosperous Black neighborhood in north Tulsa, Oklahoma. Also in 2021, state legislators passed a law that limits how race is discussed in classrooms. Tulsa activists say HB 1775 prevents descendants of those who built Greenwood from being able to acknowledge the attack, and also Greenwood’s success. In...
Building Back Black Wall Street
Black Wall Street, or the historically Black neighborhood Greenwood, Oklahoma is the site of a once prosperous, thriving, Black community. It is also the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a violent attack waged by white supremacists, killing hundreds of residents and leveling homes and businesses. In the second episode of our three part Black History Month series, we talk about how the community built back. In fact, Greenwood’s...
70 Million: Why Policing Our Schools Backfires
School resource officers are often called upon in middle and high schools to help with routine discipline. But for many children, especially those with disabilities, a law enforcement response to their behavior can lead to the school-to-prison pipeline. This week on Making Contact, we hear a story from our podcast partner 70 Million about the relationship between students with special needs and school resource officers and the changes...
Geraldine’s Story: How Public Schools Are Failing Black Students with Dyslexia
Making Contact · Geraldine’s Story: How Public Schools Are Failing Black Students with Dyslexia Black students with dyslexia all too often carry a heavy burden in our public schools. This documentary centers around a grandmother who fought for years to get her grandkids — particularly her grandson — properly assessed for dyslexia. Like too many African American boys, Geraldine Robinson’s grandson had been erroneously labeled...
The End of Student Debt: Free College and Debt Strikes
Making Contact · The End of Student Debt: Free College and Debt Strikes 44 million Americans hold over 1.6 trillion dollars of student debt and the cost of higher education continues to skyrocket. — And it’s the poor, people of color and women who are most severely impacted. — The COVID-19 crisis highlights the vulnerability of debt when people are unable to find jobs or pay off loans. We look at two urgent...
