Knowledge Gumbo

Katherine Johnson once said we will always have STEM with us, and she wasn't being sentimental about it. She was insisting on it. This week on Knowledge Gumbo, we sit with a mathematician whose orbital calculations were trusted enough that astronaut John Glenn refused to fly until she personally verified them by hand, and with the segregated office where that trust was built. Katherine Johnson wor...

Leah Chase fed the Freedom Riders before they walked into danger, and she called it building big bridges. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, host Alicia Thomas unpacks one of the most quietly powerful quotes in Black American history: "Food builds big bridges. If you can eat with someone, you can learn from them. And when you learn from someone, you can make big changes." Leah Chase w...

Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor said the kitchen does not lie, and once you hear why, you will not season anything the same way again. This episode of Knowledge Gumbo sits with a single line from her 1970 essay "Kitchen Crisis," written in Toni Cade Bambara's landmark anthology The Black Woman. We trace how a Gullah woman from the South Carolina Lowcountry turned cooking into proof of character, and why...

Toni Tipton-Martin found something buried inside a word that gets used to praise Black women in the kitchen — and once you hear what she found, you cannot unhear it. In this episode of Knowledge Gumbo, host Alicia Thomas sits with a quote from Tipton-Martin's celebrated work and follows one thread of language all the way back to where it started — and what she finds there is not what it looks like...

Melinda Russell wrote something down in 1866 that Black women were never supposed to say out loud. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, Alicia Thomas follows one line from Russell's own pen — and what it reveals about survival, knowledge, and the stories we're still not telling about ourselves. You have not heard this story. And once you do, you'll understand why it matters right now. K...

Edna Lewis spent her entire life trying to recapture the flavors of her childhood in Freetown, Virginia, and in doing so she preserved something far greater than recipes. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, we sit with her words about the distance between a dish and the world it came from. Born in 1916 in Freetown, a community founded by formerly enslaved people, Lewis became one of th...

Dr. Patricia Bath, the first Black woman to patent a medical device in America, believed that geography and income should never determine whether someone can see. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, Alicia Thomas reflects on Bath's quote — "The ability to restore sight is the ultimate reward" — and what it means to return something that should never have been taken away. Bath's journey...

Wangari Maathai believed you cannot protect the environment unless people are empowered to claim it as their own. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, host Alicia Thomas reflects on that idea and what it demands of us today. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, mobilized women across Kenya to plant more than 50 million trees, and became the first African woman awarded the No...

Dr. Gladys West is the mathematician whose calculations made GPS possible — and most people have never heard her name. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, host Alicia Thomas sits with one of Dr. West's most quietly powerful quotes and explores what it means to do work that matters without waiting for the world to notice. Dr. West spent 42 years as one of the only Black women at the Nav...

Dr. Jane Cooke Wright helped build modern cancer medicine from a Harlem hospital, and most people have never heard her name. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, host Alicia Thomas sits with Dr. Wright's founding vision for clinical oncology and asks what it means to create infrastructure, not just outcomes. Dr. Wright was born in 1919 into a family of healers. Her grandfather had gradu...

Visibility without power is just decoration — and Melissa Harris-Perry built a career proving exactly that. This episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast opens with one of her most clarifying insights: being seen is not the same as being heard, and being heard is not the same as having power. For Black women navigating media, content creation, and public life, that distinction is everything. When Me...

Kathleen Collins directed one of the most important films in Black cinema history in 1982 — and almost no one saw it for decades. This episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast explores the life and vision of Kathleen Collins, filmmaker, playwright, and screenwriter, whose feature film Losing Ground dared to show the interior life of a Black woman on her own terms. Collins believed film should illumi...

Charlene Hunter-Gault never felt she had to prove herself. She felt she had to be herself. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, host Alicia Thomas reflects on that quiet but radical distinction and what it means for Black women who are constantly asked to justify their presence in rooms they have every right to occupy. Hunter-Gault made history in 1961 when she and Hamilton Holmes becam...

Ida B. Wells knew that truth sitting in a drawer does nothing. In this episode of Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, we sit with her challenge to all of us: are you willing to turn the light on, even when it costs you? Wells was a journalist, editor, and anti-lynching activist working in the South at the end of the 19th century. While the mainstream press ignored or justified racial violence, she documented...

Black women's visibility is not a simple gift — it's a question. Who benefits when we are seen, and who benefits when we are not? In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, host Alicia Thomas opens with a striking quote from writer, critic, and cultural thinker Margo Jefferson: "The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say." Jefferson's insight becomes the lens for an hones...

Black women's representation in visual culture has never been just an art world conversation. It has always been a matter of power. In this episode of Knowledge Gumbo, we center a quote from Carrie Mae Weems, the photographer and video artist who spent decades insisting that images of Black women carry complexity, nuance, and power on our own terms. Host Alicia Thomas connects Weems' groundbreakin...

Norma Merrick Sklarek believed that architecture should reflect the dignity of the people it serves. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo Podcast, we explore the extraordinary legacy of Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first Black woman licensed as an architect in the United States and the first Black woman elected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She entered the profession in 1950...

Doris Derby civil rights photographer picked up her camera in Mississippi in the 1960s — when witnessing what was happening to Black people was dangerous, and documenting it was even more so. As an activist and SNCC field secretary, Derby understood something essential: whoever controls the image controls the memory. She wasn't willing to let someone else decide how Black people would be remembere...

Faith Ringgold believed art was not what you see, but what you make others see — and she spent a lifetime proving it. Born in Harlem in 1930, Ringgold became one of the most important visual storytellers in American history, weaving narrative quilts and paintings that held the full weight of Black life: grief and joy, resistance and beauty, memory and dream. In this episode of the Knowledge Gumbo...

Black women across the diaspora shaped theology worldwide. In this episode, a June Jordan quote opens a reflection on spiritual inheritance, self-love, and the refusal to be severed from our roots. Episode 37 opens with a striking quote from poet, essayist, and activist June Jordan, born in Harlem to Jamaican immigrants. Her declaration that being both a feminist and a Black woman demands the same...

Episode 36: The Spiritual Roots of Black Women's Activism - Fannie Lou Hamer on Faith & Justice Fannie Lou Hamer's powerful quote reminds us that faith and justice are inseparable forces in the fight for liberation. In this episode, we explore how spirituality fueled the civil rights movement and ask: How does your faith call you toward justice? IN THIS EPISODE: • Who Fannie Lou Hamer was and...

Rebecca Cox Jackson was born into slavery, became free, and then became a powerful preacher who founded an all-Black women's Shaker community when the AME church refused to let her lead. Her story asks: What will you walk away from to remain faithful to yourself? When the institution said no, Rebecca Cox Jackson found another way. Born in 1795, she felt a divine calling to preach that she could no...

EPISODE 34: Jarena Lee on Building Sacred Space "If it is wrong for man to hold property in man, it is wrong for woman to hold property in woman." — Jarena Lee ABOUT THIS EPISODE In 1819, Jarena Lee became the first woman authorized to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Born free in New Jersey in 1783, she traveled thousands of miles on foot, building communities of faith wherever B...

This short episode introduces the current tone and direction of The Knowledge Gumbo Podcast . Knowledge Gumbo is a reflective podcast centered on the stories and wisdom of Black women who shaped the world we’re still trying to build. Each episode begins with a quote, followed by brief context, an honest reflection, and one question to carry. This is not a podcast about advice or instruction. It is...

EPISODE SUMMARY This episode challenges listeners to examine whether they're truly living with purpose or just going through the motions. Through the inspiring story of Barbara Hillary - the first African-American woman to reach both the North and South Poles in her 70s - we explore what it means to live without excuses and pursue meaningful work. KEY HIGHLIGHTS The workplace reality check that sp...