Urban Roots

Elijah Davis is the co-founder of the Historic African American Neighborhood and District Summit, HAANDS, for short. HAANDS brings together professionals in historic preservation and storytelling, economic development and entrepreneurship, and community organizing to share ideas about what can be done to “preserve, enhance, and elevate” Historic Black places.

In this conversation, we learn more about Elijah’s family connections to Mobile, his work in community economic development with Birmingham-based Urban Impact, and how he started HAANDS with his co-founder Lejuano Varnell of Sweet Auburn Works.

This year’s summit will take place over November 17 and 18 in Atlanta Georgia — and guess what, listeners… we’ll be there! Claudia Polley of the Urban Legacy Lands Initiative, which we featured in our Indianapolis episodes, has offered us a travel stipend to attend.

To help us cover the remainder of our travel costs, we’re hoping to raise $500 dollars from our listeners. If you believe in the work we do, sharing and preserving the histories of underrepresented people and places, then please donate to us via our PayPal page or Venmo. Note the word “HAANDS” when you donate.

If you’re interested in the future of black heritage lands, we think you’ll really enjoy this conversation — and maybe even get inspired to join as at the summit! Hope to see you there!

Credits:

Thank you to Elijah Davis, Claudia Polley, Krista Weatherholt, and ULLI.  This episode was edited by Vanessa Quirk and Connor Lynch and mixed by Connor Lynch. Our music is by Adaam James Levin-Areddy. Your hosts are Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Quirk.

As you may remember, our first season explored the history of three African American neighborhoods in Cincinnati. We explored the times when those neighborhoods were thriving — and when disinvestment instigated many of the socio-economic challenges these communities continue to face today.

But one piece we didn't explore was how institutional investors have contributed to these communities’ affordability and housing challenges.

After we aired the season, Dr. Hayden Shelby, an Assistant Professor of Planning at the University of Cincinnati, reached out saying she was teaching a class on housing systems and institutional investors — and, instead of papers, she was asking her students to make a podcast. As part of Urbanist Media — the community preservation not-for-profit that produces Urban Roots — we've been helping Dr. Shelby, guiding her and her students to develop a new podcast, If Walls Could Talk.

In this conversation, we sat down with Dr. Hayden Shelby to learn more about the issue of institutional investors broadly and how they specifically operate in Cincinnati.

Dr. Shelby and her class will be hosting two community conversations about institutional investors (details below). We hope as many people as possible in Cincinnati take part in these conversations — it’s time to collectively create the solutions Cinci neighborhoods need to curb the negative impact of institutional investors and allow these communities to, once again, thrive.

We’re trying something new: bringing you bonus content to keep Urban Roots in your feeds (and hearts?) between seasons!

First up is a fascinating conversation with Vishaan Chakrabarti, the co-founder and creative director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism. Vishaan, who has years of experience in the urbanism and architecture fields (check out his TED Talks and New York Times collaborations for some examples of his work), and the folks in his studio are doing the good work of trying to make our cities more equitable. In this conversation, we talk about a seismic shift happening in preservation and planning: a move away from preserving buildings and towards communities.

We also pull back the veil a bit on what we’re up to — and give you some backstory about Urban Roots and Urbanist Media, Deqah’s anti-racist community preservation not-for-profit.

Tell us what you think! Send an email or voice memo to [email protected], rate us on Apple podcasts, or follow us on Instagram @urbanrootsculture. And if you want to support Urban Roots, please consider donating to our Paypal @urbanistmedia.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ms. Jean Spears was a young mother and burgeoning preservationist. She saved antiques from houses about to be demolished; she bought a home in a white slum and renovated it; later on, she did the same with a historic home in the black neighborhood near Indiana Avenue. In the eighties, she and some neighbors started digging into this black neighborhood’s history, uncovering the names of Black doctors, civic leaders, and other professionals who had lived there, many of whom had worked for Madam C.J. Walker. She helped rename the neighborhood to Ransom Place, in honor of Freeman Ransom, Madam Walker's prodigious lawyer. And in 1991, they succeeded in getting the Ransom Place Historic District included in the National Register of Historic Places.

Thanks in no small part to the connection to Madam C.J. Walker, Jean Spears was able to save this pocket of Black history, in an area that — as we explained last episode — the city of Indianapolis had almost erased from memory. But black Indy history is about more than Madam Walker, and other stories and places in the city need protection, too. In this episode, we’ll introduce you to three Black women who are carrying on what Ms. Jean Spears started — safeguarding these little-known stories of the past and guiding Indianapolis toward a brighter future.

Our Guests: We talk with Claudia Polley of the Urban Legacy Lands Initiative; Kaila Austin, an artist and historian (who also shared her oral history with Flinora Frazier with us); Judith Thomas, the Deputy Mayor of Neighborhood Engagement for the City of Indianapolis; and Paula Brooks, the Environmental Justice Program Manager at the Hoosier Environment Council.

Our Sponsors: This episode, the first of a two-part series on Black Indy, was made possible by a grant from Indiana Humanities. We need help for future projects so please consider donating to Urbanist Media on PayPal, Venmo, or Patreon!

Credits: Hosts and Executive Producers: Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Maria Quirk / Editor and Executive Producer:  Connor Lynch / Mixer: Andrew Callaway. Music/Composer: Adaam James Levin-Areddy.

About Us: Urban Roots unearths little-known stories from urban history, especially histories of women and people of color that are in danger of being forgotten. Our mission is to elevate underrepresented voices and help preserve the places significant to them.

Find Us Online: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

Madam C.J. Walker was a brilliant entrepreneur who built a haircare empire and became the first African American woman millionaire. You might have heard about her, but not many people know that her headquarters used to be located in Indianapolis, along a once vibrant Black corridor called Indiana Avenue, a place that today is known for parking lots, high-speed traffic, and uninspiring university buildings.

Why do so few people know this story? Because, over decades, government planners and private developers slowly and systematically erased Indiana Avenue's history. Luckily, however, some Black Hoosiers are working to uncover — and reclaim — what almost disappeared without a trace. In this episode we tell their — and the Avenue’s — story.

Our Guests: We talk with some incredibly distinguished Black Indianapolis experts: journalist and Madam C.J. Walker biographer (and descendent) A’Lelia Bundles; Susan Hall Dotson of the Indiana Historical Society; Claudia Polley of the Urban Legacy Lands Initiative; Wildstyle Paschall, an artist and community advocate; Devon Ginn of the Walker Legacy Center; and centenarian/Indiana Avenue author, Mr. Thomas Hart Ridley.

We also reference the research of Dr. Olon Dotson of Ball State University. You can find the aerial photographs we mention in the episode here: https://maps.indy.gov/MapIndy/

Our Sponsors: This episode, the first of a two-part series on Black Indianapolis, was made possible by a grant from Indiana Humanities. To help us fund future projects please donate to Urbanist Media on PayPal, Venmo, or Patreon!

Credits: Hosts and Executive Producers: Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Maria Quirk / Editor and Executive Producer:  Connor Lynch / Mixer: Andrew Callaway. Music/Composer: Adaam James Levin-Areddy.

About Us: Urban Roots dives deep into little known stories from urban history, unearthing histories of women and people of color that are in danger of being forgotten. Find us at Website | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

In our previous episode, we told you the first half of Biddy Mason’s remarkable story: how she was born into slavery in Mississippi, earned her freedom in one of the largest freedom suits in American history, and went on to become one of Los Angeles’ most well-respected healers.

Today, in the second of our two-part series, we're telling the final half of Biddy’s story: how she went from owning nothing at all to becoming one of the wealthiest women and philanthropists in the American West by the time she died in 1891.

You’d think this remarkable woman would be taught in every California classroom; her memory etched throughout the built landscapes of Southern California. But no. Apart from one (absurdly difficult to locate) memorial pocket park downtown, Biddy’s memory has almost been erased. The courthouse where her freedom trial was held is gone. Her first home, too. Her former real estate properties, if still standing, have no markers. Even the UCSF mural, one of only two historical depictions of Biddy, was very nearly demolished in 2020.

But a group of organizers and historians fought back to keep the mural — and Biddy’s story — safe from destruction. Now, the Biddy Mason Collaborative is uncovering more and more about this woman who built Black L.A. — and working hard to keep her memory alive.

Our Guests: This episode we speak with folks from the Biddy Mason Collaborative. We talk with co-directors Sarah “Sally” Barringer Gordon, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Kevin Waite, an American history professor at Durham University (in the UK) and author of West of Slavery, and Jackie Broxton, executive director of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation. We also speak to Laura Voisin George, an architectural historian (and PhD candidate at the UCSB) and Sky Lea Ross, a phD candidate at UCLA and a therapist with Peace Over Violence.

About Us: Urban Roots is a podcast that dives deep into little known stories from urban history. It is an offshoot of Urbanist Media, a not-for-profit anti-racist community preservation collaborative.

Credits: Hosts and Executive Producers: Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Maria Quirk / Editor and Executive Producer:  Connor Lynch / Mixer: Andrew Callaway. Music/Composer: Adaam James Levin-Areddy.

Find Us Online: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

In the spring of 2013, Laura Voisin George was in the reading room at the Huntington library when she came across a historical detail that struck her as … unusual.

At the time, Laura was a PhD candidate studying one of California's first surgeons. While perusing a series of articles, she discovered the existence of 10 massive murals — built into a lecture hall at U.C. San Francisco's medical school — that told the history of California medicine in a colorful, elaborate, and explicit social realism style. Laura scanned a photo of one of those murals, the one depicting the mid 1800s, and was surprised to see a Black nurse, a woman working side by side with one of the leading doctors of Los Angeles (and a former slave owner to boot). In the 1800s.

Laura wanted to know more, so she started digging. Soon, she found this nurse's name: Biddy Mason. Then, she found so much more. 

This season, we are dedicating two full episodes to telling the remarkable story of Biddy Mason. In Part 1, we talk about Biddy’s beginnings: how she went from an enslaved woman in Mississippi to one of the most renowned healers in Los Angeles. We also talk to a group of organizers and historians from the Biddy Mason Collaborative (or ‘the Biddy Mason Justice League’ as we like to call them) who are collaborating and uncovering more about this woman than we ever knew before — and working hard to keep her memory alive.

If you like this episode, make sure to stay tuned for Part 2, when we tell the second half of Biddy’s life: her journey to becoming one the wealthiest women in the West — and a founder of Black Los Angeles.

Our Guests: This episode we speak with folks from the Biddy Mason Collaborative: project co-directors Sarah “Sally” Barringer Gordon, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Kevin Waite, an American history professor at Durham University (and author of West of Slavery); as well as Jackie Broxton, Executive Director of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation and Laura Voisin George, an architectural historian (and PhD candidate at UCSB).

About Us: Urban Roots is a podcast that takes a deep dive into little known stories from urban history. It is an offshoot of Urbanist Media, a not-for-profit anti-racist community preservation collaborative.

Credits: Hosts and Executive Producers: Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Maria Quirk / Editor and Executive Producer:  Connor Lynch / Mixer: Andrew Callaway. Music/Composer: Adaam James Levin-Areddy.

Support us: Venmo | PayPal

Founded in 1838, Green-Wood Cemetery is one of the earliest (and most famous) rural cemeteries in America. Its grandiose, park-like setting is scattered with notable burial sites and architectural masterpieces. But, in our interviews with Green-Wood staff members (Neela Wickremesinghe, Jeff Richman, and Darryl Jones), we learn about a lesser-known area: the Freedom Lots, where African Americans were buried.

In 2017, these seven lots were in very rough shape — some of the graves were destroyed past recovery. This episode tells the story of the people of color who took action to not only preserve what was left of these physical graves, but to commemorate the memories of the people buried there.

Our Guests: Green-Wood’s Director of Restoration and Preservation, Neela Wickremesinghe; staff Historian, Jeff Richman; and Darryl Jones (Neela’s former intern who now works for the cemetery full time)! 

About Us: Urban Roots is a podcast that takes a deep dive into little known stories from urban history. The pod is an offshoot of Urbanist Media, a not-for-profit anti-racist community preservation collaborative.

Credits: Hosts and Executive Producers: Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Maria Quirk / Editor and Executive Producer:  Connor Lynch / Mixer: Andrew Callaway. Music/Composer: Adaam James Levin-Areddy.

Support us by Donating: PayPal | Venmo

Find Us: Website | PayPal | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

Welcome back, folks! We hope you’re ready for another season of Urban Roots because Season 2 is coming soon – Juneteenth (June 19th) to be exact. Please join us on an urban journey as we explore hidden African American history in cities across the country.

Join us in Brooklyn, New York where we visit Greenwood Cemetery’s Freedom Lots — in  Los Angeles, California where we find all the places Biddy Mason’s memory has been preserved — and in Indianapolis, Indiana, where we uncover the hidden gem of Indiana Avenue and learn why Madam C.J. Walker relocated her headquarters there in 1910 .

Our Indianapolis episodes are made possible thanks to funding from Indiana Humanities!

Credits

About Us

Urban Roots is a podcast that takes a deep dive into little known stories from urban history and is brought to you by Urbanist Media, an anti-racist community preservation organization.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook — @urbanrootsculture

Follow us on Twitter — @urbanrootspod and @urbanistmedia

Subscribe to our Urban Roots Podcast YouTube channel!

In this episode, the final of our Lost Voices of Cincinnati series*, we’re exploring the history of South Cumminsville, a neighborhood that, like many Black neighborhoods in Cincinnati, has been divided and diminished by top-down urban planning decisions and years of disinvestment. But it’s also a place with a long history of Black entrepreneurship, ownership, and activism — going back to the late 1800s, when unsung Cincinnati hero Sarah Fossett helped make South Cumminsville a vibrant community for African Americans. Today, it remains a place where residents support each other and fight every day to improve their community. *If you missed our prelude episode, then take a pause and listen to that show first! Also, check out our previous episodes on the Evanston and Avondale neighborhoods!

Our Guests: South Cumminsville community council president, Tim Canady, vice president Derek Fagin, Annie Williams, Alberta Warton, Queens of Queens City’s Sean Andres, Wilbur Canady, and Working in Neighborhoods’ Rigel Behrens.

Our Sponsors: The Lost Voices of Cincinnati series was made possible by a Truth & Reconciliation grant from ArtsWave. We need help for future projects so please consider donating to our Fundly fundraising campaign!

Credits: Hosts and Executive Producers: Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Maria Quirk / Editor and Executive Producer:  Connor Lynch / Mixer: Andrew Callaway. Music/Composer: Adaam James Levin-Areddy.

Support us by Donating: Venmo | PayPal

Find Us Online: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube