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History

  • Photographer Stanley Forman captured a desegregation protest at City Hall Plaza that roiled the nation.
  • "Fly With Me" features the stories of stewardesses who fought back against the sexist and racist restrictions of the 1950s airline industry.
  • A new podcast from GBH News, "What Is Owed?" explores what reparations would look like in one of America's oldest cities.
  • Ray Anthony Shepard has put together an award-winning book for young readers to counter what he says are "years of sanitized Black History months and schoolbooks." He has chosen instead to tell the story from the inside - examining the question of race through the lyrical biographies of six prominent American heroes, all of whom challenged and changed the racial barriers of their day - Ona Judge, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B Wells, MLK and Barack Obama.

    Cambridge Forum guest speaker Shepard, intertwines his academic research with personal memories of his mother's stories about her enslaved father, accounts informed by his own experiences of living through eight decades from the era of Jim Crow to the present day. He provides a refreshing and corrective understanding of the role of race in American life - Black and White. As a retired history teacher and textbook editor, he now writes books "that didn’t exist when I was in the classroom and books I couldn’t publish as an editor.” Ray Anthony Shepard graduated from the University of Nebraska and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

    The conversation will be moderated by Jude Nixon, Professor of English and former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Salem State University.
    Partner:
    Cambridge Forum
  • Join us on an genealogical quest – an author’s exploration of her family and its history, brought to life in Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family, named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker. Don’t miss Rachel Webster’s presentation and conversation with historian Kendra Field about her experience connecting with relatives across lines of color, culture, and time.

    In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer of almanacs, and one of the greatest astronomers of his generation. Banneker then wrote what would become a famous letter to Jefferson, imploring the new president to examine his hypocrisy, as someone who claimed to love liberty yet was an enslaver. More than two centuries later, Rachel Jamison Webster, an ostensibly white woman, learns that this groundbreaking Black forefather is also her distant relative. Acting as a storyteller, Webster draws on oral history and conversations with her DNA cousins to imagine the lives of their shared ancestors across eleven generations, among them Banneker’s grandparents, an interracial couple who broke the law to marry.
    Partner:
    American Ancestors
  • Michele Norris's latest book, "Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity," explores how Americans are engaging in frank and covert dialogues about race.
  • The Granite state is not usually considered a mecca of Black culture — but the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire is working to preserve all the ways the state has been shaped by Black figures.
  • Saturday is Holocaust Remembrance Day, yet too many young people lack basic knowledge about the genocide.
  • Until last year, Merle Hillman was one of more than 1,100 soldiers killed in the Pearl Harbor attacks whose remains were never identified.
  • This special gathering features two main projects about reckoning and repair that have been developed at GBH : the WORLD's new film, The Cost of Inheritance: An America ReFramed Special and the upcoming GBH News-produced podcast, "What Is Owed?".

    Directed by the acclaimed Yoruba Richen, the World's one hour-long documentary delves into the intricate topic of reparations in the United States. It navigates through history's complexities, systemic inequalities and the burgeoning conversation on racial conciliation. With its blend of personal stories, communal reflections, and academic perspectives, the film not only enlightens but also sparks a deeper understanding of the reparations debate. In this video, director Yoruba Richen and subjects from the film, Randy Quarterman and Sarah Eisner, engage in a thought-provoking panel discussion. This is a unique opportunity to gain insight into the creative process and the crucial themes explored in the documentary.

    Viewers also get an exclusive sneak peek (or listen) of the upcoming GBH News-produced podcast, "What is Owed?" This seven-part podcast, reported by GBH News political reporter Saraya Wintersmith, ventures into the heart of Boston's reckoning with its history of slavery and economic exclusion. Wintersmith seeks to understand what reparations might look like in one of the oldest cities in America, uncovering the lessons for a successful reparations framework through the stories of its architects, past and present.

    Watch The World's documentary here
    Partner:
    GBH NEWS