Mae Mallory was a radical civil rights activist, Black Power movement leader, school desegregation organizer and strong proponent of Black armed self-defense. Her passionate dedication to “solving Black peoples’ problems” changed the world, but her name is mostly known because of her false arrest and conviction for kidnapping an elderly white couple in 1961. After the verdict was overturned by the North Carolina Supreme Court, Mallory continued to work for freedom, autonomy and security for African Americans and was influential in the early foundations of the African nation of Tanzania.

Guest Dr Ashley Farmer is Assistant Professor of History and African and African-Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas-Austin and author of Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era. Farmer is also a co-editor of New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (NUP Press, 2018) and an editor of the Black Power Series published with NYU Press.

Music for this episode provided by Jeff Cuno, Daniel Henderson and His Big Band, and Cynthia Meng & Kim Onah.

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