Urban Roots

To celebrate Juneteenth, Urbanist Media's Urban Roots podcast has partnered with Cincinnati Public Radio (WVXU)⁠ to bring you Juneteenth Cincinnati Shorts: weekly, 90-second tributes to people and places important to Cincinnati’s African American history.  Today, we’re highlighting the Cotton Club in the West End’s Hotel Sterling. It was not only a mecca of jazz music AND the one place in Cinc...

This year, Urbanist Media 's  Urban Roots  podcast  partnered with Cincinnati Public Radio (WVXU)⁠ to celebrate Juneteenth! Juneteenth Cincinnati Shorts are weekly, 90 second tributes to people and places important in our region’s African American history. This first one is all about the historic Regal Theatre, located in the West End. Find each episode here, or, tune in to 91.7 WVXU on Thursd...

Located between Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon, Vanport was a temporary wartime housing project built in 1942 to support the workers of the Kaiser shipyards. Working class people of African, Japanese, European, and Indigenous descent came for its well-paying jobs and affordable housing.  Despite the fact that segregation was the norm in Oregon at the time, Vanport was a multicultural p...

Today on the pod, we have a conversation with one of the biggest contributors to African American Preservation alive today...  Brent Leggs! If you’re in historic preservation – or a similar field– you probably heard of Brent. But for those of you who haven’t — Brent is a Senior Vice President at the National Trust for Historic Preservation . And while Brent has done many amazing things to preserve...

Happy April Fool's...but it's no April fools here...today, we’re 100% introducing you to two boss women doing dope work with Main Street America revitalizing urban main streets across America: Dionne Baux , the Vice President of Urban Development, and Amanda Elliot , Senior Program Officer and Director of California Programs. We met Dionne and Amanda last year at HAANDS —  the Historic Afr...

The tables are turned! Your hosts, Deqah and Vanessa, were recently interviewed by Nicholas Sikellis for his podcast, The Intangible, for a conversation that got into both their backgrounds and their unique perspectives on historic preservation — as well as their passion for the more intangible/nontraditional aspects of preservation, like cultural heritage and economic development. The interv...

Today, we’re introducing you to two all-star women we met at HAANDS —  the Historic African American Neighborhood and District Summit — who are doing great work in Texas. First up, Tanya Debose, a fourth-generation Houstonian, the Executive Director of the Independence Heights Redevelopment Council , and the founder of Preserving Communities of Color in Houston. Then, Desiree Powell, a progra...

Rita Cofield is an associate project specialist working on the Los Angeles African American Historic Places ( LAAAHP ) at the Getty Conservation Institute . Deqah first met Rita virtually on a National Trust panel on preservation podcasting , and Vanessa was connected to Rita by LA Principal City Planner Ken Bernstein (our special guest at the Biddy Mason Listen & Learn , which you should chec...

Lejuano Varnell is the co-founder of the Historic African American Neighborhood and District Summit, HAANDS , and the executive director of Sweet Auburn Works , which does preservation-based economic development along the historic Auburn Avenue corridor in Atlanta. We met Lejuano when we were in Atlanta for the first, in-person HAANDS, and were lucky enough to receive a tour from him of Auburn Ave...

We’re back from the Historic African American Neighborhood and District Summit ( HAANDS ) and we’re still buzzing! Deqah and Vanessa discuss the many things they learned about preservation-based economic development — and gush over the great people they met who are working to help their communities stay in place, connect with their past, and thrive into the future. Our experience at the summit rea...

Elijah Davis is the co-founder of the Historic African American Neighborhood and District Summit, HAANDS , for short. HAANDS brings together professionals in historic preservation and storytelling, economic development and entrepreneurship, and community organizing to share ideas about what can be done to “preserve, enhance, and elevate” Historic Black places. In this conversation, we learn more a...

As you may remember, our first season explored the history of three African American neighborhoods in Cincinnati. We explored the times when those neighborhoods were thriving — and when disinvestment instigated many of the socio-economic challenges these communities continue to face today. But one piece we didn't explore was how institutional investors have contributed to these communities’ a...

We’re trying something new: bringing you bonus content to keep Urban Roots in your feeds (and hearts?) between seasons! First up is a fascinating conversation with Vishaan Chakrabarti, the co-founder and creative director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism . Vishaan, who has years of experience in the urbanism and architecture fields (check out his TED Talks and New York Times collaboration...

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ms. Jean Spears was a young mother and burgeoning preservationist. She saved antiques from houses about to be demolished; she bought a home in a white slum and renovated it; later on, she did the same with a historic home in the black neighborhood near Indiana Avenue. In the eighties, she and some neighbors started digging into this black neighborhood’s history, uncovering...

Madam C.J. Walker was a brilliant entrepreneur who built a haircare empire and became the first African American woman millionaire. You might have heard about her, but not many people know that her headquarters used to be located in Indianapolis, along a once vibrant Black corridor called Indiana Avenue, a place that today is known for parking lots, high-speed traffic, and uninspiring university b...

In our previous episode, we told you the first half of Biddy Mason’s remarkable story: how she was born into slavery in Mississippi, earned her freedom in one of the largest freedom suits in American history, and went on to become one of Los Angeles’ most well-respected healers. Today, in the second of our two-part series, we're telling the final half of Biddy’s story: how she went from owning not...

In the spring of 2013, Laura Voisin George was in the reading room at the Huntington library when she came across a historical detail that struck her as … unusual. At the time, Laura was a PhD candidate studying one of California's first surgeons. While perusing a series of articles, she discovered the existence of 10 massive murals — built into a lecture hall at U.C. San Francisco's medical schoo...

Founded in 1838, Green-Wood Cemetery is one of the earliest (and most famous) rural cemeteries in America. Its grandiose, park-like setting is scattered with notable burial sites and architectural masterpieces. But, in our interviews with Green-Wood staff members (Neela Wickremesinghe, Jeff Richman, and Darryl Jones), we learn about a lesser-known area: the Freedom Lots , where African Americans w...

Welcome back, folks! We hope you’re ready for another season of Urban Roots because Season 2 is coming soon – Juneteenth (June 19th) to be exact. Please join us on an urban journey as we explore hidden African American history in cities across the country. Join us in Brooklyn, New York where we visit Greenwood Cemetery’s Freedom Lots — in  Los Angeles, California where we find all the places...

In this episode, the final of our Lost Voices of Cincinnati series *, we’re exploring the history of South Cumminsville, a neighborhood that, like many Black neighborhoods in Cincinnati, has been divided and diminished by top-down urban planning decisions and years of disinvestment. But it’s also a place with a long history of Black entrepreneurship, ownership, and activism — going back to the lat...

In this episode, the third of our Lost Voices of Cincinnati series *, we’re exploring the history of Avondale, a neighborhood that experienced a different kind of white flight and is still recovering from transformative events that occurred during the mid-century such as race riots and housing discrimination. We will discuss how these trends triggered decades of disinvestment and explain important...

We are so excited to kick off our Lost Voices of Cincinnati series which explores the rich African American history of Cincinnati. You can think of this episode as a kind of prelude of sorts. We go back, way back, to Cincinnati’s beginnings, and tell stories you’ve probably never heard — like how a Cincinnati barber helped execute the biggest North American escape of enslaved people, ever; ho...

The Lost Voices of Cincinnati series will holistically explore the physical and social transformations three neighborhoods have experienced and endured in Cincinnati, Ohio — Avondale, Evanston, and South Cumminsville. There is so much that has been lost—some things were gained—and stuff that remains. Despite the odds, these resilient communities have worked hard to preserve their histories and bui...

We often take history for granted, skirting around subjects as if we already know everything there is to know about a historical event, person, or place. But, what do we really know? There are many stories that have not been told and many topics that have not been fully explored. This podcast challenges you to think beyond the familiar, and broaden the scope of what we see as urban history. Urban...