BAPcast, a Black and proud herstory podcast, is set to release its first episodes on June 19th. With a focus on Black women who tend to exist in the periphery of U.S. history lessons, host Mary Eliska Dorn seeks to fill in some of the gaps she suspects are as prevalent in the average American’s understanding of Black history as they have been in her own. Mary Eliska is a Brooklyn photographer whose interest in critical race theory and history has only been piqued in recent years. “As a kid growing up in a predominantly white Austin, Texas suburb, I instinctively recoiled from anything that stood to set me apart from my peers, including suppressing any curiosity about Black history or culture,” Dorn says, “The way my history education was set up made it almost seem like Black people didn’t exist between slavery and the 20th Century Civil Rights Movement, and those lessons tended to focus on the struggle and victimization Black people endured. I remember being taken aback the first time I saw images of Black Victorians. Of course, there were Black Victorians… why are these images of dignified, ornately dressed, wealthy Black people from late 19th century America so surprising?”

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