Black History Year

Black people are a spiritual people. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the concept of God was first birthed in Africa, but that didn't stop Europeans from copying our traditions and erasing us from Christianity. Dr. Anthony Browder opens the floodgates to the African origins of a faith so many in our community are committed to. It's time for the truth. It's time to talk about God. BHY is produce...

Black power has many forms: a fist in the air, a liberated mind, or the ownership of the ground upon which you stand. The founders of Africatown, a self-determined community of freed Black people in Alabama knew this kind of Black power. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston delved deep into this question when she interviewed Cudjo Kazoola, the last surviving member of the community that had founded Africat...

Advertising, marketing, the entertainment industry and even the news media are selling us something. And what they’re selling usually isn’t good for us. Racist imagery like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are only the tip of the iceberg. Professor Gene Shelton reveals the racism behind advertising, and gets real about reclaiming our representation in media. This is a stirring conversation on how we all...

Food is family, culture and LIFE! As food writer Adrian Miller and Chef Rock Harper remind us, African food traditions are healthy, abundant and delicious. So how did we get to a place where we're told soul food and our food traditions are toxic? It's time to lift up our food culture! BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear....

In this episode, our story begins in Nubia and the Nile Valley, the Kingdom of Kongo, the Mali Empire, and the Great Zimbabwe. Dr. Runoko Rashidi reveals how the origins of Black people lie in great, ancient African civilizations and how our hidden history spans the globe. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and shar...

Welcome to Season 2 of Black History Year. In everything we do at PushBlack, we’re always asking, “How do we work together to make things better for Black people?” In this season of the Black History Year podcast, we’re stepping to that challenge in an even bigger way.  We have episodes that’ll open eyes to new ideas about reparations, criminal justice reform, and the ways Black cooperative econom...

Learning your history makes you - and your people - stronger. As Black people, we know we’re left out of the history books. That the media images are skewed. That we need access to experts, information and ideas so we can advance our people. Black History Year connects you to the history, thinkers, and activists that are left out of the mainstream conversations. You may not agree with everything y...

Kerry Washington and Gabrielle Union bring an inspiring level of wisdom, humility, humor and Black pride to this conversation on Black motherhood. Give it a listen and then share it with every mother, father, sister, brother, other mother and friend in your life. This is for all of us! Black History Year is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest non-profit Black media company. Obviously, the...

Medical treatment disparities for Black women is as old as America. Dr. Dorothy Roberts, a professor of Africana Studies, Law, and Sociology at University of Pennsylvania, has been producing groundbreaking work on race and gender that focuses our attention on urgent, contemporary issues in health, social justice, and bioethics. For this BHY, we dig deep with Dr. Roberts on the history and present...

Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, even Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. all have a place in one of the most obscured parts of our history - the Black tradition of gun ownership. Douglas Jefferson, the Vice President of the National African American Gun Association, argues that for Black people in America to be fully vested as citizens, we have to be able to experience the fullest freedom every single l...

“We must face the fact that in America,” said MLK, ”the church is still the most segregated major institution.” For Black people, the church has traditionally been a place of restoration, renewal, community, and collective action. But even during the vigor and heat of the Civil Rights Era, with church leaders like MLK up in front, the role of Christianity did not go unquestioned in Black America....

No matter how many tickets we buy, or how many hours we watch, Black Americans still have very little influence over what film or television gets made - or how it portrays us. The images of Black people pumped out to the mainstream range from affirming to annoying to actively damaging. Morehouse’s Dr. Stephane Dunn helps us unpack how we got here. She is one of the founding members of Morehouse’s...

“I remember hearing somebody describe freedom as the ability to wake up in the morning and decide what you want to do with your day.” Dr. Boyce Watkins, founder of the Black Business School, has plenty to say about personal freedom, Black liberation, and self-determination. For Watkins, black economic advancement can’t be reduced to whether you are for, or against, capitalism, socialism or any oth...

American history is a mess. We’re taught our ancestors were docile, child-like beings who were too incompetent to find a way out of slavery - but we’re expected to study and admire the slaveholding leaders of the American Revolution! We are taught that non-violent protest and forgiveness are the only ways we can achieve our goal of liberation, which can only be granted by benevolent white people....

Learning your history makes you - and your people - stronger. As Black people, we know we’re left out of the history books. That the media images are skewed. That we need access to experts, information and ideas so we can advance our people. Black History Year connects you to the history, thinkers, and activists that are left out of the mainstream conversations. You may not agree with everything y...