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Black History Matters
History written for readers, not for footnotes.
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Black History Now
CARICOM’s reparations campaign, Hilary Beckles, Mia Mottley, Jamaica’s petition to the King, and the Black Britons—from David Lammy to Sheku Kanneh-Mason—reshaping the nation.
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Black History Now
How Caribbean and African families built Brixton and Peckham, why aggressive policing of Black youth led to the 1981 uprising, and what the Scarman Report found—and missed.
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Black History Now
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 Now
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
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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Black History Now
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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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.
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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.