Season 4: The Jim Crow Era
Season 4 examines the century between the Civil War and the modern civil rights movement to understand how systemic racism and slavery persisted and evolved after emancipation—and how Black Americans still developed strong institutions during this time. (This season originally aired in 2022.)
This season also includes Music Reconstructed, a special four-part series in which historian Charles L. Hughes introduces us to musicians who are exploring the sounds, songs and stories of the Jim Crow era.
Please note that podcast episodes are currently being updated to highlight essential ideas from each episode along with teaching recommendations and additional resources. All podcast episodes and transcripts are still available.
Episode 1: Jim Crow: Yesterday and Today
In this introduction to Season 4, which examines the Jim Crow Era, co-hosts Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Bethany Jay discuss how students need to grasp this history to understand injustices many of them face today, from voter suppression to mass incarceration.
Episode 2: Creating Brave Spaces: Reckoning With Race in the Classroom
People from all corners of public life are telling teachers to stop discussions about race and racism in the classroom, but keeping the truth of the world from students simply doesn’t work. English teacher Matthew Kay urges educators to create brave spaces instead. He provides examples of classroom strategies for engaging with students at the intersections of race, literature and lived experience. Hint: it involves vulnerability, accountability and quality affirmations.
Episode 3: The History of Whiteness and How We Teach About Race
Historian Ed Baptist provides context on the creation and enforcement of a U.S. racial binary that endures today, as well as Black resistance as a force for political change. And Aisha White urges educators to ask themselves, “What did you learn about race when you were younger?” before they engage with children. She argues that self-reflection and ongoing education are vital tools to combat the fallacy of ignoring students’ racialized experiences.
Episode 4: Reconstruction 101: Progress and Backlash
Just months after the Civil War ended, former Confederates had regained political footholds in Washington, D.C. In her overview of Reconstruction, Kate Masur notes how—in the face of evolving, post-slavery white supremacy—Black people claimed their citizenship and began building institutions of their own. Ahmad Ward then takes us to 1860s Mitchelville, South Carolina, where Black policing power, land ownership and more self-governance were the norm.
Episode 5: Correcting History: Confederate Monuments, Rituals and the Lost Cause
The Lost Cause narrative would have us believe that Confederate monuments have always been celebrated, but people have protested them since they started going up. Historian Karen Cox unpacks how the United Daughters of the Confederacy used propaganda to dominate generations of teachings about the Civil War through textbooks, legislation, and popular culture—and how, after the war, the South and the North prized white reconciliation over justice for all.
Episode 6: Lynching: White Supremacy, Terrorism and Black Resilience
Black American experiences during Jim Crow were deeply affected by the ever-present threat of lynching and other forms of racist violence. Historian Kidada Williams amplifies perspectives from Black families, telling stories of lynching victims obscured by white newspapers. She and Kellie Carter Jackson urge educators to confront the role of this violence in American history, how major institutions stood idly by and how Black Americans fought for justice.
Episode 7: Premeditation and Resilience: Tulsa, Red Summer and the Great Migration
Naming the 1921 Tulsa massacre a “race riot” is inaccurate. Historian David Krugler urges listeners to call this and other violent attacks what they were: premeditated attempts at ethnic cleansing. Decades before, African Americans moved North in record numbers during the Great Migration. Krugler delves into connections between diaspora and violence and highlights the strength of Black communities in resistance to white supremacist terrorism.
Episode 8: Building Black Institutions: Autonomy, Labor and HBCUs
Historian Tera Hunter describes Black institution-building post-slavery and throughout the Jim Crow era, illustrating how Black workers reorganized labor to their advantage, despite virulent white resistance. During the same period, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) produced future leaders while cultivating resistance to white supremacy—and continue to do so. Educator Jelani Favors explains the evolution of these institutions, noting their legacies of social activism and student advocacy.
Episode 9: Black Soldiers: Global Conflict During Jim Crow
U.S. involvement in world wars and the domestic Black freedom struggle shaped one another. By emphasizing the diverse stories of servicemen and women, historian Adriane Lentz-Smith situates Black soldiers as agents of American empire who were simultaneously building their own institutions at home. While white elected officials worked to systemically embed segregation into government, African Americans attempted to bolster their citizenship and freedom rights through soldiering.
Episode 10: The New Deal, Jim Crow and the Black Cabinet
Opportunities created by the New Deal were often denied to African Americans. And that legacy of exclusion to jobs, loans and services can be seen today in federal programs and policies as well as systemic inequities in housing, education, health and the accumulation of wealth. Historian Jill Watts examines the complicated history of the New Deal, beginning with the growing political influence of Black voters in the 1930s, the election of FDR and the creation of the Black Cabinet.
Episode 11: Changing the Game: Sports in the Jim Crow Era
In the United States, Black athletes have had to contend with two sets of rules: those of the game and those of a racist society. While they dealt with 20th century realities of breaking the color line and the politics of respectability, Black fans, educational institutions, and the Black press were building sporting congregations with their own wealth and energy. Historians Derrick White and Louis Moore trace how these great men and women worked to create a more just future on the field and off.
Episode 12: The Harlem Renaissance: Restructuring, Rebirth and Reckoning
During the Harlem Renaissance, more Black artists than ever before were asking key questions about the role of art in society. Oftentimes the Harlem Renaissance is misconstrued as a discrete moment in American history–not as the next iteration of a thriving Black artistic tradition that it was. Literature scholar Julie Buckner Armstrong urges educators to look deeper into the texts left to us by these artists and come to a fuller understanding of this stage in a long chronology of Black artistic expression.
Episode 13: Medical Racism: A Legacy of Malpractice
This nation has a long history of exploiting Black Americans in the name of medicine. A practice which began with the Founding Fathers using individual enslaved persons for gruesome experimentation evolved into state-sanctioned injustices such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, among others. Award-winning historian Dr. Deirdre Cooper-Owens details a chronology of medical malpractice and racist misconceptions about health while highlighting lesser-known stories of medical innovations by African Americans.
Episode 14: Black Political Thought
Black political ideologies in the early 20th century evolved against a backdrop of derogatory stereotypes and racial terrorism. Starting with Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Agency, historian Minkah Makalani contextualizes an era of Black intellectualism. From common goals of racial unity to fierce debates over methods, he shows how movements of the 1920s and 1930s fed into what became the civil rights and Black Power movement.
Episode 15: Criminalizing Blackness: Prisons, Police and Jim Crow
After emancipation, aspects of the legal system were reshaped to maintain control of Black lives and labor. Historian Robert T. Chase outlines the evolution of convict leasing in the prison system. And Historian Brandon T. Jett explores the commercial factors behind the transition from extra-legal lynchings to police enforcement of the color line. We examine the connections between these early practices and the more familiar apparatuses of today’s justice system—from policing to penitentiaries.
Episode 16: Why Hard History Matters: Addressing the Legacy of Jim Crow
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries represents New York’s 8th congressional district. Our final episode this season takes us to the U.S. House of Representatives for a conversation between Rep. Jeffries and his brother, our host, Dr. Hasan Jeffries, to discuss the lingering effects of the Jim Crow era—including voter access, prison and policing reform, and other enduring injustices—and to discuss the continued relevance of teaching “hard history” as it relates to public policy today.
Music Reconstructed 1: Jason Moran, Jazz and the Harlem Hellfighters
This is a special four-part series where historian Charles L. Hughes introduces us to musicians who are exploring the sounds, songs and stories of the Jim Crow era. In this installment, Jazz pianist Jason Moran discusses his acclaimed musical celebration of a man he calls “Big Bang of Jazz,” bandleader, arranger and composer James Reese Europe. During World War I, Europe fought as a Lieutenant with the fabled “Harlem Hellfighters” 369th U.S. Infantry and directed the regiment’s renowned band.
Music Reconstructed 2: Dom Flemons, Black Cowboys and the American West
From ranches to railroads, learn about the often unrecognized role that African Americans played in the range cattle industry, as Pullman porters and in law enforcement. In part two of this special series, Grammy Award-winner Dom Flemons takes us on a musical exploration of the American West after emancipation. “The American Songster” joins historian Charles L. Hughes to discuss the complexity of the sounds, songs and stories about the Jim Crow era.
Music Reconstructed 3: Adia Victoria and the Landscape of the Blues
When we consider the trauma of white supremacy during the Jim Crow era—what writer Ralph Ellison describes as “the brutal experience”—it’s important to understand the resilience and joy that sustained Black communities. We can experience that all through the “near-comic, near-tragic lyricism” of the blues. In part 3 of this series, acclaimed musician, songwriter and poet Adia Victoria talks with Charles L. Hughes about how the bittersweet nature of blues does “the very emotionally mature work of acknowledging” this complex history.
Music Reconstructed 4: Lara Downes’ Classical Perspective on Jim Crow
From concertos to operas, Black composers captured the changes and challenges facing African Americans during Jim Crow. Renowned classical pianist Lara Downes is bringing new appreciation to the works of artists like Florence Price and Scott Joplin. In our final installment of Music Reconstructed, Downes discusses how we can hear the complicated history of this era with historian Charles L. Hughes.
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