Brainwaves Video Anthology
Pat McLean-Smith “For Sonia”
Pat McLean-Smith, is a published poet and teaching artist. She is the author of two books of poetry and the recipient of several awards. Including 1st place for the Sonia Sanchez/Audre Lorde Poetry Competition, 2nd place for Judith Stark...
Curated Video
Alice A Dunnigan
Alice Allison Dunnigan was an African-American journalist, civil rights activist, and author born on the 27th of April 1906 in Kentucky. She was the first African-American female correspondent to receive White House credentials and the...
Curated Video
Harriet Tubman: the "Moses" of Her Time
Aside from helping her family (and thousands more) escape slavery, she led troops in combat, cured a disease, and was generally way more of a rebel than history generally portrays her as. She lived a remarkably full life, especially for...
Curated Video
Ruth Carol Taylor: the First African American Flight Attendant
Ruth Carol Taylor was the first African-American flight attendant in the United States. She was born in Boston, on December 27th, 1932, and attended Elmira College graduating as a registered nurse from the Bellevue School of Nursing in...
Curated Video
Eugene Bullard: the First African American Military Pilot
Eugene Bullard was born October 9, 1895, in Columbus, Georgia. At the age of 11, he ran away for good, and for the next six years, he wandered the South in search of freedom. After World War I, he enlisted in the French Foreign...
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Lucy Stanton: the First Black Woman to Earn a College Degree
Lucy Stanton was an American abolitionist and feminist figure, notable for being the first African-American woman to complete a four-year course of a study at a college or university. She completed a Ladies Literary Course from Oberlin...
Curated Video
Sophia Danenberg: the Mountain Climber
This is Sophia Danenberg, the first African American and the first black woman from anywhere in the world to climb Mount Everest. Dannenberg's first major climb was up Mount Rainier in Washington State in 2002. In 2005, she scaled five...
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The Waco Horror: the Unjust Killing of Jesse Washington
The body of Fryer, a fifty-three-year-old white woman, was found by her children on the family’s property in Robinson, seven miles southeast of Waco. Jesse Washington, a laborer on Fryer’s farm, was arrested and charged with Fryer’s...
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Joseph Henry Douglass: Changing America With Music
Classical violinist Joseph Henry Douglass helped empower the Black community through music and education at a time when Southern lawmakers were pushing back against the progress of Reconstruction.
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The Little Rock Nine: an Introduction
Do you remember your first day of school? I do. And I was reminded about that day when learning about the story of the Little Rock Nine. Here's the story of my first day of school and how it was different from the experience of the...
Brainwaves Video Anthology
Adam F.C. Fletcher - Omaha Black History
Adam F.C. Fletcher is a writer, speaker and focused on human engagement, education transformation, and social change. Exciting, educating, and empowering are some of the words people have used to describe Adam F.C. Fletcher. A specialist...
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Anna Louise James
Anna Louise James was the first African American woman to be licensed as a pharmacist in Connecticut. The daughter of a former slave, Anna was raised in Connecticut and graduated from Brooklyn College of Pharmacy. When her brother-in-law...
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Robert Morris Sr.: First Black Lawyer in the U.S. to Win a Lawsuit
Robert Morris Sr. was the second African-American to be sworn into the Massachusetts bar, but the first to practice actively. Born in Salem, Massachusetts on June 8, 1823, he received formal education at Master Dodge’s School in Salem....
Brainwaves Video Anthology
Vanessa Siddle Walker - Teachers Make a Difference - Hattie Kittridge Brown
Vanessa Siddle Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies (B.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.Ed Harvard University; Ed. D Harvard University). For 25 years, she has explored the...
Curated Video
White Mob Lynches Frank Embree Hours Before Trial in Missouri
Frank Embree was nineteen when he was accused of raping a 14-year-old white girl. Embree was from the state of Missouri, and Black men convicted of rape of a White woman were sentenced to death by lynching. His horrifying story shows the...
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Young Coretta Scott King
Correta Scott King is often known for being the wife of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., but she was so much more than that. She was an activist in her own right and came from a family that valued education above all else....
Curated Video
Thaddeus Stevens: an Abolitionist Who Championed the Rights of Blacks
Born on the 4th April 1792, in Danville, Vermont, United States, Thaddeus Stevens was known to be a fearsome reformer, who never backed down from a fight. Having witnessed the oppressive slave system at close range, he developed a fierce...
Curated Video
Henry "Box" Brown: The Journey to Freedom
This video tells the story of Henry "Box" Brown. It covers his childhood, his heartbreaking separation from his wife and children, and his grueling 27-hour escape from enslavement. This video is part two of "The 5 Most Daring Escapes...
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Brother Jourdan's Response
Todays episode features a scathing response to possibly the most ill advised “take me back” letter ever and some wisdom from an ancient African proverb. The response came from a formerly enslaved man named Jourdan Anderson, who lived...
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The Devil Half Acre
Lumpkin’s jail also known as The Devil Half Acre was one of the most notorious slave sites in the south run by Robert Lumpkin as a slave trading post in 1840. This slave-trading complex operated from the 1830s until the end of the...
Curated Video
10 things we never knew about Aretha Franklin
Multiple Grammy winner and "Queen of Soul" Aretha Franklin was known for such hits as "Respect," "Freeway of Love" and "I Say a Little Prayer." The fourth of five children, Aretha Louise Franklin was born on March 25, 1942, in Memphis,...
Curated Video
Mary Turner: A Young Black Woman Dehumanized
On May 16, 1918, a plantation owner was murdered, prompting a manhunt which resulted in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among...
Curated Video
Alex Haley: Author of 'Roots' and 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X'
Alex Haley served in the U.S. Coast Guard for two decades before pursuing a career as a writer. He eventually helmed a series of interviews for Playboy magazine and later co-authored The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The following decade,...
Curated Video
Francisco Nzumbi
The Black History Buff Podcast is a fully independent project. We aren’t backed by a publishing house, advertising partners or a major enterprise. For our existence, we depend on our loyal listeners – we depend on you. So if you enjoy...