African American History

kYmberly Keeton harvested community interest to create Growing Your Roots: The Inaugural African American Genealogy Conference. And she has a perhaps surprising suggestion of where to start exploring family history.

Photographs from a local newspaper that has chronicled African American life in Austin for almost 50 years are on display at the Austin History Center for the next few months.

The exhibit, Our Community, Our Voice: Photographs from The Villager Newspaper, features images published in the weekly paper since it was founded by Tommy Wyatt in 1973.

From Texas Standard.

The landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education set a historical precedent for education reform in the country. The ruling that found state laws requiring separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional is widely discussed in classrooms, but a less familiar story is the legal debate that led to the trial’s conclusion in 1954.

From Texas Standard.

When Heman Sweatt applied to the University of Texas at Austin Law School in 1946, he was automatically rejected because he was black. He sued, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices ruled unanimously in his favor, and Sweatt became the first black student at the UT Law School.

But his enrollment was just the beginning of a long struggle to integrate the school.

From Texas Standard.

Fifty years ago today, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a hotel balcony in Memphis. King was the preeminent leader of the American civil rights movement, and advocated nonviolent resistance to discrimination against black Americans. King had gone to Memphis to support sanitation workers who were in a labor dispute with the city.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Strauss Moore Shiple, project director with the South Carolina’s Olde English District, and Louis Venters, professor of African-America and American history at Francis Marion University.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Elijah Watson, news editor for the New York-based black culture website Okayplayer. The word "woke," is an African-American colloquialism that is now defined as "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues."

Watson talks about William Melvin Kelley, the man who coined the word "woke," how the word came about and why he took on this project.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Dr. Christine Nix, assistant professor and program coordinator of Criminal Justice at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, and the first African-American woman Texas Ranger.

Nix talks about being the first African-American woman hired by the Rangers, spending time in the Army Reserves and her 25 years in law enforcement.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, associate professor of history and African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of The Price for Their Pound of Flesh.

Berry talks about the domestic cadaver trade; how enslaved people responded to being appraised, bartered and sold; and the economic value of enslaved people.

From Texas Standard.

There are about 100 public and private historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the country, most of them in the south. The new documentary Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities premieres Monday on PBS’s Independent Lens, exploring the history and significance of these institutions.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks to the Honorable Robert L. Wilkins, district judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and author of Long Road to Hard Truth: The 100-Year Mission to Create the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Judge Wilkins talks about the anniversary of the opening of the national museum in Washington, D.C., racial politics concerning African-Americans, and the taking down of monuments.

On this edition of In Black America, we listen back to a 1988 conversation with Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley.

Documents tell us how much people were sold for during our country's history of slavery. But a new book goes further, looking at how people who were enslaved were valued throughout their entire lives.

Our story begins at a dead end near 13th Street and Walnut Avenue in the Chestnut neighborhood of East Austin, just down the street from where Leslie Padilla has lived for about three years. 

You wouldn’t know it from looking at it, but a vacant field just past this dead end is a piece of Austin’s African-American history. About a century ago, this land was home to the city’s annual Juneteenth celebration, which marks the end of slavery in Texas.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Michael Gibson co-founder and chairman of Clear View Group, LLC, an African American investment firm based in Austin, TX, the new owners of Ebony Magazine and JETMag.com; and Lynn Norment, former senior writer and managing editor with Ebony Magazine.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Jarrad Henderson, producer of ‘Beyond-This-Place: The Visual History of African American Fraternities and Sororities.’

African American Fraternities and Sororities have played an important role in the development of African American identity for over one hundred years. Beyond-This-Place is an independent documentary project that examines the rich culture of African American Greek Letter Organizations.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. presents highlights of a speech given by Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party in the fall of 1996 at the 10th Annual Heman Sweatt Symposium on Civil Rights.

From Texas Standard:

Despite a war, changes to the Constitution and to state and federal laws, slavery continues to be very much a part of the American story. We've seen it echoed in the controversies around the use of police power and the consistent iconography of the confederacy.

But much of what we know about the first-hand experiences of slaves themselves comes from written accounts – transcribed interviews done in the 1930s using stereotyped misspellings.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. concludes his conversation with Ken Coleman, journalist and author of ‘Million Dollars Worth of Nerve: Twenty-One People Who Helped To Power Black Bottom, Paradise Valley and Detroit’s Lower East Side.’

The title 'Million Dollars Worth of Nerve' comes from Michigan Chronicle Editor Louis E. Martin, who quipped that he was sent to Detroit in 1936 with $135 and “a million dollars worth of nerve.”

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Ken Coleman, journalist, and author of ‘Million Dollars Worth of Nerve: Twenty-One People Who Helped To Power Black Bottom, Paradise Valley and Detroit’s Lower East Side.’

The title 'Million Dollars Worth of Nerve' comes from Michigan Chronicle Editor Louis E. Martin, who quipped that he was sent to Detroit in 1936 with $135 and “a million dollars worth of nerve."

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Richard Paul, an award-winning independent public radio documentary producer, and Steven Moss, Associate Professor of English at Texas State Technical College, co-authors of ‘We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program.’

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Jarrad Henderson, producer of ‘Beyond-This-Place: The Visual History of African American Fraternities and Sororities.’

African American Fraternities and Sororities have played an important role in the development of African American identity for over one hundred years. Beyond-This-Place is an independent documentary project that examines the rich culture of African American Greek Letter Organizations.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Larry "LAK" Henderson, founder and CEO of Smart Music Entertainment, and the creator of a new sound of hip-hop music that is used as a tool to inspire learning, and awaken the consciousness of youth and people in our communities.

Henderson's educational hip-hop music has received airplay on major radio stations around the world, and he is a noted speaker on hip-hop and its impact on our communities.