Black History Now
Windrush: Rebuilding Britain and the Broken Promise
Why postwar Britain needed Caribbean workers, what the “mother country” promised them, and how the state that invited them later failed the Windrush generation.
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Black History Matters
The Past is Present
History written for readers, not for footnotes.
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Black History Now
Before Windrush: Black Britain from Rome to 1948
Black Britain did not begin in 1948. From Roman soldiers on Hadrian’s Wall to Tudor musicians, Georgian abolitionists, and wartime organizers, Part 1 traces seventeen centuries of Black presence.
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Black History Now
Hidden in Plain Sight: Black LGBTQIA+ Pioneers Who Shaped American Freedom
For LGBTQIA+ History Month, a look at the Black queer and trans organizers, writers and thinkers whose work sat at the center of the freedom struggle.
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Black History Now
Howard Tennis Players Demand Accountability After Racist Tournament Imagery
After KKK imagery appeared in tournament materials, Howard’s club tennis players called for investigation, training, public apologies, and action beyond suspension.
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Global
Standing with the Young: France's October 13 Mobilization
A protest that began with Black high school students in the Paris suburbs spread across France on October 13, 2026. Their own flyers show how the movement saw itself.
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Black History Now
From Apartheid Courtrooms to the Nobel: Navi Pillay and the Long Fight for International Justice
The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Navi Pillay, the South African jurist who defended apartheid's opponents and helped make rape a prosecutable act of genocide.
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Why this platform exists
Historianspeaks is a public history project devoted to making the Black past reachable — free of jargon, free of paywalls, and free of the flattened, one-note version of the story most of us were handed in school.
Through essays, conversation, and archival material, this site treats history as a working tool: something that explains the present and helps chart what comes next.
Blog
Black History Now
Weekly blogs on Black history—past and present that shape our contemporary lives.
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Podcast
The Historianspeaks Podcast
Long-form conversations running from Reconstruction politics to popular culture. Latest episode: Juneteenth and a legacy of song.
Listen nowAcross the Centuries
A collage of the Black past, in color
From the marketplaces of West Africa through the age of sail, plantation colonies, Reconstruction classrooms, the Harlem street, and today’s block parties.
The African past
Kingdoms, scholars, and markets
15th century
Coastal trade and early contact
16th century
Arrival and resistance in the Americas
17th century
Arrival and resistance in a new world
18th century
Artisans and free communities
19th century
Freedom schools after emancipation
20th century
City life, music, and movement
21st century
Culture and community today
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One dispatch a week: a new essay, a podcast episode, and something from the archive worth a second look.