A mystery has been brewing in a small ranching town on Hawaii's Big Island. Word has it that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff bought the land, stirring worries about what he plans to do with it.
Popular culture is filled with stories of the underground railroad - the legendary secret network that helped enslaved people escape from southern slave states to free states in the north.
Harriet Tubman is the underground railroad's best known conductor. Tubman, who was a Union spy during the Civil War, escaped slavery in Maryland, but returned again and again, risking her own freedom to help free others, including members of her family.
Inevitably there's much we don't know ...including how the term, the Underground Railroad, came to be.
Journalist Scott Shane, stumbled on the answer while he was writing his book "Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland."
His book tells the story of Thomas Smallwood, an activist and writer who's story and the key role he played in the abolition movement has mostly been lost to history.
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Standing on 6th Avenue, with its center spire and twin turrets reaching into the sky, St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church has seen much history. As the second oldest church of the denomination in Georgia, the history is woven into St. James’ architecture and the stories of past and current members.
Tucked away on base at Fort Moore, Ga., inside a large warehouse-like building rests a unique feature of the history of war in the world. The U.S. Army Armor & Cavalry Collection has a large collection of tanks and other cavalry vehicles spanning over a century.
Beyonce's Renaissance brought house music back to mainstream audiences. But even when it wasn't gracing the Grammys, house never went away. Born from the ashes of disco in the late 1970s and '80s, house was by and for the Black, queer youth DJing and dancing in Chicago's underground clubs. Since then it's become the soundtrack of parties around the world, and laid the groundwork for one of the most popular musical genres in history: electronic dance music. Today on the show, the origins of house music — and its tale of Black cultural resistance — told by the people who lived it.
In the U.S., flavored cigarettes have been banned since 2009, with one glaring exception: menthols. That exception was supposed to go away in 2023, but the Biden administration quietly delayed the ban on menthols. Why? Well, an estimated 85 percent of Black smokers smoke menthols — and some (potentially suspect) polls have indicated that a ban on menthols would chill Biden's support among Black people. Of course, it's more complicated than that. The story of menthol cigarettes is tied up in policing, advertising, influencer-culture, and the weaponization of race and gender studies. Oh, and a real-life Black superhero named Mandrake the Magician.
A survey of historians and presidential experts ranks President Biden in 14th place all-time, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan. Former President Donald Trump came in last.
For a time, the phrase "America First" seemed an artifact of the prewar world. But the idea that the U.S. would do better by holding the rest of the world at arm's length never entirely disappeared.
The scoring records of two Black American college basketball stars from the 1970s and 1980s are overlooked by the NCAA as Caitlin Clark takes the mantle as women's scoring champion.
To celebrate the history of Black romance, Gene and Parker are joined by reporter Nichole Hill to explore the 1937 equivalent of dating apps — the personals section of one of D.C.'s Black newspapers. Parker attempts to match with a Depression-era bachelor, and along the way we learn about what love meant two generations removed from slavery.
Longshot candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued an apology to the Kennedy family Sunday night after his super PAC ran an ad repurposing one from former President John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign.
Happy Lunar New Year! According to the Chinese lunisolar calendar, the new year began Saturday. For many, like our host Regina G. Barber, this calendar and its cultural holidays can feel completely detached from the Gregorian calendar. Growing up, she associated the former with the Spring Festival and getting money in red envelopes from relatives, and the other with more American traditions. But the Chinese calendar has a deep, centuries-long shared history with the Gregorian calendar.
To learn more about this shared history, Gina talks to scientists and historians, who spill the tea about the science behind calendars, and how both calendars and the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration played a key role in the rise and fall of empires.
Created by cartoonist Naji al-Ali in 1969, Handala is a 10-year-old Palestinian refugee with his back to the world. The war in Gaza has renewed interest in this representation of Palestinian struggle.
