"My mind ain't sprightly like it used to be and heaps of things what went on when I was young, I forget and heaps of them what I want to forget, I can't." Calline Brown from the WPA ex-slave narratives, Coahoma County, MS in the collection of Archie Givens Sr. Collection of African American Literature and Life …
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, My People – Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives
"I think that you'll have taught our history as our armor, that Black people are more than the sum of our traumas or tragedies. That Black history is the way, and a path to look back. I think that we will remember how to be good to each other and how to speak well of …
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Shaun M. Anderson, The Black Athlete Revolt: The Sport Justice Movement in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter
"We just wanna live. We wanna go out and enjoy our lives. We don't wanna talk about this all the time. We gonna talk about it when it's happening, but we are trying to build, we're trying to love, we're trying to have our families, we're trying to eat good. We're trying to travel the …
Author Carol Anderson on her new book The Second: Race and Guns in A Fatally Unequal America
“How can I be unarmed when it is my blackness you fear," writes Carol Anderson in her latest work, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). This episode was recorded as part of a live event in anticipation of the release of Carol Anderson’s latest Book The Second: hosted by …
“Change comes one at a time” – author Claudia Rankine on her latest work, Just Us: An American Conversation
Launching the sixth season of BMR, Lissa sits down with poet and essayist Claudia Rankine to dive into her latest work Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf Press, 2020). Rankine describes the book as the result of a challenge she set to herself to talk to white men - a group she rarely talks to …
‘We are here in the right now and we have to be truthful and courageous’ – Author and professor Emily Bernard on finding her voice and speaking the truth
In 'Scar Tissue,' the first essay in Emily Bernard's debut collection, Black is the Body, she writes the story of a violent attack that left her critically injured as a graduate student, but which also led her consider her own voice and how she would use it to speak the truth of her own history …
Former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page on optimism, legacy and writing for children
*Originally released December 2017 In the season three premier, host Lissa Jones sits down with retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page to discuss his children's books, advocacy work, and optimism. Listen: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/6014004 Justice Alan Page is widely recognized for his groundbreaking legal career, as well as for his time in the NFL. Page played …
Author Erica Armstrong Dunbar: ‘I don’t think there’s a better moment to have a story about a 22 year old black woman defying the President of the United States’
*Originally released July 2017 Listen: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/5580944 In this episode, host Lissa Jones speaks with Erica Armstrong Dunbar about her recent work, Never Caught: The Washington's Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge. We reached her by phone in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dunbar is an author and historian focusing on the experiences of African American women in the context …
Dr. Mahmoud El-Kati, Professor Emeritus American Studies at Macalester College
*Originally released June 2017 Listen: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/5486278 A frequent contributor to the opinion pages of both Twin Cities dailies as well as the local Black press, Dr. Mahmoud El-Kati has published dozens of monographs and pamphlets, and has appeared on Minnesota Public Radio, and at a host of community-based conferences and events. From 1970 to 2003, Professor …
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Hidden Human Computers: The Black Women of NASA with Dr. Duchess Harris, JD, PhD
*Originally released February 2017 In her debut as host of Black Market Reads, Lissa Jones sits down with Macalester College professor and author Duchess Harris to discuss her new book Hidden Human Computers: The Black Women of NASA. This might sound familiar to listeners - the stories told in Harris's book, and stories like them, inspired the …
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