We the (Black) People

Latest Episodes:

Gone Road Tripping Aug 15, 2021

Show notes

No new content right now as I properly enjoy road trip season. Send me ideas for show topics to do when I get back! wetheblackpeoplepod@gmail.com

To Colonize Liberia or To Stay & Fight? Jul 30, 2021

Show notes

Though Black Americans have considered leaving America for a chance at full citizenship somewhere else since America's beginning, many fiercely opposed the American Colonization Society. To them, the ACS (organized in 1817 to send free Black people to Liberia) was White Americans solidifying their belief that Black freedom and citizenship had no place in America. Yet, at the same time, Black people led their own efforts to emigrate to places like Haiti and Canada. To talk about Black America's oppositional and hopeful relationship towards Liberian colonization I talked to Professor Ousmane Power-Greene, author of Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonization Movement.

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Cruising the Unknown: How Cars Rocked Black America Jul 15, 2021

Show notes

It is well known that cars changed America. But what about Black America? With America's long history of controlling Black mobility, cars meant many new freedoms for Black people. Yet, as they hit the roads through new places, new dangers lurked in the unknown. Both the dangers and the opportunities are the topic of this episode. My guest is Dr. Gretchen Sorin, author of Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights.

On one hand, cars allowed Black people to avoid segregated buses and trains. And, large cars allowed them to pack enough supplies not to risk stopping in areas they didn't know. Yet, segregation and prejudice followed them on the road. Many White towns did not welcome Black travelers, even those who needed medical attention because of an accident. Out of this came The Negro Motorist Green Book and the wide variety of Black businesses for Black travelers that filled its pages.

Let's take a drive!

Check out Driving While Black. it is both a book and a PBS documentary!

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Numbers Running in Harlem's Underground Economy Jun 30, 2021

Show notes

This episode stems from my love of the movie The Wiz. Watching it over and over as a kid I did not realize that Miss One, the Good Witch of the North, is a numbers runner. And, I definitely did not know that numbers running is a real part of gambling and Black history.

As a Black woman running numbers in a fictionalized version of Harlem, Miss One unlocks a lot about the real characters behind Harlem's numbers racket in the early to mid 20th century. One of those characters is Stephanie St. Clair. St. Clair was a numbers queen who captivated the media in her fight against police corruption and White racketeers in Harlem.

Professor Lashawn Harris, author of Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy, joins me to talk about Harlem's underground economy because that too is Black history.

Check out Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy by Dr. Lashawn Harris to learn more!

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Black Fathers vs. Slavery Jun 15, 2021

Show notes

Happy Father's Day!

For the dads out there, this episode we're looking at the often-ignored legacy of Black fathers who fought oppressive systems during and after slavery to be dutifully honorable parents in the eyes of their families. My guest is Professor Libra Hilde, author of Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities Over the Long Nineteenth Century.

We discuss the harmful stereotypes historians often fall back on when discussing Black fathers, the flexibility and resilience of Black families over time against many obstacles, honorable Black masculinity and paternal duty, the failure of White fathers who raped Black women, and what this history means right now.

In the end, fatherlessness is a systemic, not a racial problem and many Black men have done all that they could to be good fathers.

The advertisement during the show was for the podcast Seizing Freedom.

To learn more, check out Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities Over the Long Nineteenth Century by Dr. Libra Hilde!

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Slavery, Reconstruction, and Reparations, But in Indian Territory May 30, 2021

Show notes

It turns out that the history of slavery and Reconstruction played out differently in Oklahoma because Oklahoma was not American, but Indian Territory. One of the biggest differences was that former Black slaves (Indian Freedpeople) received land reparations. Yet, that land redistribution was part of a larger American project to take over Indian Territory. Professor Alaina Roberts, author of I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land, joins me to discuss the Black, White, and Native people who fought to hold land and freedom in Oklahoma.

This is a story of displacement that starts with the Indian Removal Act and ends with the Tulsa Massacre. The Native Americans (and their Black slaves) forced into Oklahoma by the Indian Removal Act displaced the Native Americans already there. Then, the Dawes Act used slavery in Indian Territory to displace the tribes living in Oklahoma in favor of Indian Freedpeople and both Black and White settlers. Both Native Americans and Black people appealed to the American government to protect their land. For a time, this worked. Ultimately, though, when White Americans wanted the land, American institutions worked to give it to them. The Tulsa Massacre, then, stands as the end of Black dreams of a racial paradise in Oklahoma under tribal jurisdiction.

To learn more check out I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land by Dr. Alaina Roberts!

Music Credit

In 1903, A Black Woman Started A Bank May 15, 2021

Show notes

This episode centers around two wild facts I just learned.

First, between 1888 and 1930 Black Americans opened and operated over 100 banks.

Second, one of those (St. Luke Bank) was headed and run by Black women.

Luckily, Professor Shennette Garrett-Scott's book Banking on Freedom is all about St. Luke's bank and the 50 year legacy of Black-owned banks.

Black people started their own banks following the failure of the white-run Freedman's Bank. St. Luke's, which opened in 1903, was headed by Maggie Lena Walker whose vision was a bank that empowered her community and other Black women.

A bank run by and for Black women innovated and persisted amid racism and sexism until the 2000s. By then, it was the longest-running Black bank in America. This is the incredible story of an incredible bank that reminds us that Black banks still matter.

Sources and Further Reading: [As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.]

Bank Black: https://bankblackusa.org/

Banking on Freedom: Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal by Dr. Shennette Garrett-Scott

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May Day & The Undeniable Power of Interracial Unions Apr 30, 2021

Show notes

Though largely unacknowledged in America in favor of Labor Day in September, May 1st is internationally recognized as International Worker's Day, the anniversary of the struggle for an 8-hour workday in Chicago in 1886.

Looking back on that brings up a lot of interesting issues such as labor's historically tense relationship with police and the Black unions that arose because of mainstream labor's racism. This episode, however, is about two interracial unions that sought radical equality in their union and society.

The first was the radical, interracial, Socialist, Local 8 branch of the Industrial Workers of the World in Philadelphia. This union ended workplace segregation, had multiracial leaders, and survived nearly a decade of attacks from bosses and the government.

The second is the Local 10 branch of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Also interracial, this union continues to take an open stance on worldwide social justice issues. This social movement unionism ranges from protesting apartheid in South Africa to shutting down ports across the West coast last Juneteenth for George Floyd.

Both unions set aside race and ethnic divisions to become powerful forces beyond the workplace. Maybe their active antiracism can teach us something.

Further Reading [As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.]:

Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia by Peter Cole [https://amzn.to/3nyPpMK]

Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly by Peter Cole [https://amzn.to/3xAQN6s]

Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area by Peter Cole [https://amzn.to/3vwe1IQ]

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Housing Reparations and the Policies that Necessitated Them Apr 15, 2021

Show notes

On March 22nd, Evanston, Illinois passed the Restorative Housing Program as reparations for its discriminatory housing policies. This bill is both a hit and a miss in restoratively addressing the history of housing discrimination. This episode, I turn to that history with Professor Paige Glotzer, author of How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890–1960.

This history begins with linking race and property value, a practice that is a result of conscious planning, starting with suburban developers and investors. Their nuisance clauses and restrictive covenants aimed to keep developments 'stable,' a code for white and wealthy. Sometimes that was explicit, but at other times exclusions were hidden behind 'color-blind' policies. They (and later realtors) legitimized the practice so well, that it became the basis for redlining, a federal, New Deal housing policy that Dr. Glotzer breaks down. Redlining had (and continues to have) huge consequences. Even though discriminatory housing was ruled illegal in 1968, discriminatory and predatory housing practices still persist to harm Black and Brown people. This is evident in examining the 2008 crash.

Being a continuing system, reparations must both right past wrongs and prevent their continuation. That is why a full picture of the history of housing discrimination matters.

Podchaser link to review We the (Black) People and help Meals on Wheels: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/we-the-black-people-1551466

For more information about Evanston's Reparation Plans: https://www.cityofevanston.org/government/city-council/reparations

[As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.]

How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890–1960 by Paige Glotzer (https://amzn.to/3aaZESf)

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (https://amzn.to/3dk94g5)

My source about Mrs. Susie Mae Rakestraw is "New Perspectives on New Deal Housing Policy: Explicating and Mapping HOLC Loans to African Americans" by Todd M. Michney and LaDale Winling

Music Credit

Workers, Not Servants: Black Domestic Worker Organizing and Resistance Mar 30, 2021

Show notes

Not only were Black domestic workers organized laborers, but their fight for better working conditions reveals lessons about the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement, and organizing in today's gig economy. To tell this history and teach these lessons, I talk to Professor Premilla Nadasen, author of Household Workers Unite!

This isn't The Help's story of Black women as loyal victims. From the 1930s-1970s, domestic workers organized to empower individual employees and to collectively rally for standardization, professionalization, and protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act. And, they did not want to be called domestic workers. As part of their fight, they wanted to be called Household technicians because they were skilled workers.

Legally, domestic workers were not included in the worker protections of the New Deal (such as minimum wage). Practically, domestic work involved isolated single employees. That meant domestic workers had to fight creatively to be recognized as workers, not servants. They organized in public spaces, ran hiring halls, lobbied for legislative changes, and much more. And, surprisingly, the very middle-class women who hired them often supported their pursuit of legal protection.

Domestic workers did a gendered occupation, were mostly Black (at this time), and were not legally allowed to unionize. Despite that, they had a lot of success as organized laborers without mainstream union or Civil rights leadership support. They were gig workers before today's gig economy and their successes can teach us a lot if only their stories are told.

Further Reading [As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.]:

Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement by Premilla Nadasen (https://amzn.to/3d5N86Z)

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