Black History Matters
History written for readers, not for footnotes.
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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.
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Black History Now
Black History Now
Roscoe Robinson Jr. (1928-1993) became the first African American four-star general in the U.S. Army, commanding the 82nd Airborne Division and representing the United States on NATO's Military Committee.
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Black History Now
A Kansas City teenager who was laughed off a bandstand became Charlie "Bird" Parker, the alto saxophonist who helped turn jazz into bebop.
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Caribbean
Born free in 1781, she rose to lieutenant in Toussaint Louverture's army and faced a French firing squad at twenty-one.
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Black History Now
How Elijah Poole became Elijah Muhammad, built the Nation of Islam as an alternative to Black churches in the urban North, broke with Malcolm X, and left a legacy carried forward in different ways by Warith Deen Mohammed and Louis Farrakhan.
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Black History Now
Born in Newark on October 7, 1934, Amiri Baraka moved from the Beats to the Black Arts Movement and helped define a generation of Black writing.
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Black History Now
In 1750, a man named Crispas ran from slavery in Framingham and vanished from the record. Twenty years later, Crispus Attucks became the first man to fall in the American Revolution.
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.
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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.
