Storyteller.

In season 8 of the TRWBS podcast, we did a series of shows called The Roots of Race, featuring the life and work of Carl Linnaeus, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Samuel George Morton, and Louis Agassiz.

This is a story of white flight and the theaters in urban spaces they left behind. This is a story of the evolution of the movie business in the early 1970s and the emergence of a thriving (and profitable) crop of films starring Black actors.

This is the story of the U.S. government policy of the No Knock Warrant, which allows law enforcement officials to make forced entry into your home without first announcing or notifying you of their presence and intention. This is also the story of Fred Hampton, a member of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party during the civil rights movement in the late 60s and early 70s. This is also the story of COINTELPRO, a secret and sometimes illegal FBI program of covert operations, designed to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt the civil rights and Black Power movements. 

This is the story of Mansa Abubakari II, 9th Emperor of Mali – a visionary, a risk-taker, a man whose dream was not deferred.