Black History Matters
History written for readers, not for footnotes.
Read the blogFounding members: join Black Thread before November 1 and lock in $9.99/month for life — with founder recognition.
Become a founding member
The New Magazine
Our power, our future. Eight deeply reported stories in Issue One — from Black Studies and Anita Hill to Sylvester, Haiti, Black Brazil, HBCU sports, and global racism. Join before November 1 and your $9.99/month rate is locked in for life.
Prefer PayPal?
Keep the magazine and the free site going with a monthly or one-time gift.
Or give monthly:
Black History Now
Education
Macron met France's student protesters for the first time and promised a Parcoursup overhaul. For the Black students who helped start the movement, Monday will show whether the promise is real.
Continue reading
Politics
For a century, opponents have blurred socialism into communism to discredit Black demands for economic justice. Here is how Black leaders, candidates, and voters have navigated that terrain, and why it still matters.
Continue reading
Black History Now
How Madeleine Baran and the In the Dark team exposed discriminatory jury selection, unreliable testimony and neglected leads in the Curtis Flowers prosecution.
Continue reading
Civil Rights
After Curtis Flowers died in October 2026, his six trials illuminate racial jury exclusion, Batson’s protections, the limits of compensation, and parallels with Walter McMillian.
Continue reading
Black History Now
From SOS Racisme to Brazil's Unified Black Movement, the organizations that have answered every rise of the far right.
Continue reading
Black History Now
In October 1993, 60,000 marchers headed for the British National Party headquarters in Welling after a wave of racist murders, including Stephen Lawrence's.
Continue readingOur Purpose
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
Weekly blogs on Black history—past and present that shape our contemporary lives.
Start reading
Podcast
Long-form conversations running from Reconstruction politics to popular culture. Latest episode: Juneteenth and a legacy of song.
Listen nowAcross the Centuries
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
Stay Current
One dispatch a week: a new essay, a podcast episode, and something from the archive worth a second look.
