Black Ivory Roots’ Podcast

This episode challenges the idea that freedom was simply given to enslaved Black people by political leaders. It examines how Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Thirteenth Amendment are often presented as the full story, while the reality is far more complex. Enslaved people did not wait for freedom. They escaped, resisted, gathered intelligence, and joined the fight for their...

This is not a Hollywood fairy tale. This is the story of one Black woman who told the truth in a room full of powerful people and paid a brutal price for it. Join us as we explore the pivotal moment that led her to confront authority head-on, igniting a firestorm of consequences that would change her life forever.

Between 1951 and 1974, hundreds of Black men incarcerated at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia became unwitting test subjects in one of America’s most disturbing chapters of medical exploitation. Dermatologist Albert Kligman, backed by pharmaceutical companies, private corporations, and government agencies, helped transform the prison into a living laboratory where chemicals, experimental drugs, a...

The 1980 Chattanooga shooting, where five Black women were attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan while standing on a public sidewalk in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This episode explores the racial violence of the attack, the courtroom failures that followed, and the landmark civil lawsuit, Crumsey v. Justice Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which helped establish a legal strategy later used to dismantle...

This episode examines the tension between institutional protection and racial injustice through the lens of S.A.M. (Sexual Abuse and Molestation) insurance policies that shield organizations from misconduct claims. It contrasts these protections with the historical reality faced by Black men and boys who were devastated by false accusations, highlighting cases like the 1920 Duluth lynchings, the S...

Before Frederick Douglass became a legend, Anna Murray Douglass, his wife,  made his freedom possible. This episode confronts the truth behind his rise, and the black woman history chose to overlook.

Before the world knew the name Emmett Till, there was his father, Louis Till, a young Black man whose life became entangled in war, accusation, and a justice system that did not move equally for everyone. His story was buried in silence for years. A decade later, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, was abducted, tortured, and murdered in Mississippi after being accused of offending a whit...

In this deeply unsettling episode of our podcast, we dive into the harrowing reality of physical punishment endured by enslaved people at the hands of their captors. Through the lens of brutality, we uncover the horrifying practice of whipping with leather lashes that tore into flesh, leaving behind not just wounds, but scars that would haunt generations. It's a painful reminder of a dark cha...

We uncover the story of Lula Sherman, a fourteen-year-old black girl whose life was taken by violence, and her suffering was nearly lost to history. This is not just a story of tragedy, but a story of truth, memory, and the fight to make sure her name is never erased. 

In 1934, Claude Neal, a 23-year-old Black farmworker in Marianna, Florida, was accused of murdering a white woman. Before he could ever see a courtroom, a white mob took him from jail. What followed was not justice. It was spectacle. Thousands gathered. The killing was anticipated. Souvenir photographs were taken. His body was mutilated and displayed. Newspapers reported it. Crowds attended. Claud...

This episode centers on Virginia in the 1700s, where control was engineered and suffering was routine. Her name was not preserved. What follows is a reconstruction based on documented punishment devices and recorded conditions because the archive refused to keep her whole. * The archive documented the punishment. It erased the person. This narrative makes that absence visible

This is not a celebratory overview, but a grounded examination of how Black history was erased, misrepresented, and pushed to the margins and why documenting it became necessary Centering the work of Carter G. Woodson, this episode traces the origins of Negro History Week and its later recognition by the United States government, while confronting how history becomes easier to manage once it is sa...

This is not history told. It is history exposed. This prologue reveals how enslavement became property and pain became profit.