Sankofa Chronicles: A Black History Podcast

August 15, 1975: Joan Little

Washington, North Carolina. 1974.

A 20-year-old Black woman is in Beaufort County Jail on a charge that shouldn't have been a felony. A jailer with a history of assaulting Black women in that jail walks into her cell after 10 p.m. with an ice pick.

Hours later, he's dead on her bunk. She's gone.

The state charges her with first-degree murder. Mandatory death penalty. In 1974, everyone in eastern North Carolina knew how that case would end.

On August 15, 1975, a jury went out. Six Black jurors, six white jurors — a jury that should never have existed in that county.

Seventy-eight minutes later, they came back.

This is the case Rosa Parks and Angela Davis dropped everything for. The case that invented a new kind of jury selection in the South. The case they don't teach you.

Everyone remembers V-J Day. But nobody remembers what happened to the Black veterans who came home. On August 14, 1945, President Truman announced Japan's surrender and the end of World War II. But for the more than one million Black Americans who fought in segregated units — the Tuskegee Airmen, the 761st Tank Battalion, the Red Ball Express drivers — the war they cared about was just beginning. This is the story of the Double V Campaign: victory against fascism abroad, victory against Jim Crow at home. From the cafes of France where they were treated as men, to the train platforms of Mississippi where they were reminded, they were not, we trace how Black WWII veterans became the backbone of the civil rights movement. Pull up a seat. Go back and fetch it.

Sankofa Chronicles: A Black History PodcastAugust 14, 1945: The War Was Over. Their Fight Had Just Started.

#BlackHistory #WWII #DoubleV #CivilRights #MedgarEvers #TuskegeeAirmen #SankofaChronicles #BlackVeterans #ThisDayInBlackHistory

August 13th: Soaked in Struggle, Genius, and Grace

Most people let August 13th pass like any other day.

They have no idea what this date holds.

In this episode of Sankofa Chronicles, we go back and fetch the history of August 13th — from 1892 to 2014.

On this one date:

The Black Press is born in Baltimore when The Afro-American hits the streets.

167 Black soldiers of the 25th Infantry are dishonorably discharged with no trial after the Brownsville Affair in 1906 — including 6 Medal of Honor recipients.

Voting rights organizer Lamar Smith is murdered on a Mississippi courthouse lawn in 1955 for carrying absentee ballots.

Marcus Garvey's UNIA gives the world the Red, Black, and Green Pan-African flag in Harlem in 1920.

And we celebrate brilliance born on this day: Judge James Benton Parsons, Claudia McNeil of A Raisin in the Sun, Dr. Charles E. Anderson of the Tuskegee Airmen, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, opera legend Kathleen Battle, and Olympic gold medalist Shani Davis.

Plus: Watts 1965, Central African Republic independence 1960, and Jordan Casteel's Visible Man in 2014.

From a newspaper in 1892 to a gallery wall in 2014 — August 13th carries it all.

This is Black history every day. Not just a month.

Sankofa: Go back and fetch it.

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August 12th - Black History Events That Shaped America. On this date in Black American history: a formerly enslaved man builds the first recognized Black church, the South's voter suppression blueprint gets written, Harlem Renaissance entertainer Gladys Bentley claims her spotlight, civil rights activist Victoria Jackson Gray Adams runs for U.S. Senate on a freedom ballot, NASA pioneer Frederick D. Gregory makes history, and white nationalist violence strikes Charlottesville in 2017. Nine moments. One date. Every episode of The Date goes deep on a single day - the people, the decisions, and the consequences that shaped us. Search: Black history podcast, August 12, African American history, civil rights, Charlottesville, Harlem Renaissance, Absalom Jones, Gladys Bentley, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.