Black history with present-tense stakes.
Black History Year centers overlooked Black history through short narrative lessons and interview-led conversations. Its episodes connect Reconstruction, Jim Crow, medicine, incarceration, folklore, and public safety to present-day questions about power and survival.
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Black History Year presents Black history as an active source of political memory, cultural pride, and practical warning. Its strongest episodes are concise but not shallow. A typical short installment begins with a familiar historical frame, then pivots toward what was erased, softened, or misrepresented. Reconstruction becomes a story about Black collective power, voting strength, and the backlash that followed. Carter G. Woodson's legacy is traced through James Henry Woodson's refusal to accept humiliation under slavery. Jim Crow medicine becomes a way to understand why Black doctors and patients were blocked from full care, even inside institutions that claimed to serve them. The show is comfortable naming systemic racism plainly. It also makes room for examples of courage, invention, and community response. Episodes on the 13th Amendment and plea bargaining connect the legal language of freedom to incarceration and exploitation. A piece on amusement parks shows how popular entertainment profited from anti-Black spectacle and Confederate nostalgia. Another turns toward West African mythical beings, treating folklore as part of a wider cultural archive rather than a curiosity. The feed also includes longer interview material connected to PushBlack, including a conversation about alternatives to policing and crisis response work through Cahoots. Those conversations slow the pace. Guests are allowed to explain services, limits, and consequences without being rushed into sound bites. The show can be heavy, but it is rarely vague. It works by tying names, laws, places, and institutions to larger patterns. Its editorial stance is advocacy-minded and educational, yet the language stays accessible. Listeners come away with usable context: what happened, who benefited, who resisted, and why the story still matters. Black History Year is best understood as a steady corrective to thin public memory, one brief lesson or careful conversation at a time.
Made for: For listeners seeking accessible Black history, anti-racist context, and stories that connect historical events to present systems. It especially suits people who prefer concise lessons with a clear moral and political frame.
What sets it apart: The show pairs very short historical narratives with occasional longer advocacy-centered interviews, moving quickly from erased details to practical consequences. It is less a nostalgia project than a working archive of resistance, harm, memory, and repair.
Learning your history makes you - and your people - stronger. As Black people, we know we’re often left out of the history books. That media images are skewed. That we need access to experts, information, and ideas so we can uplift our community. The Black History Year feed connects you to the history, thinkers, and activists that are usually excluded from mainstream conversations, through must-hear interviews and 2-Minute Black History stories. You might not agree with everything you hear, but we’re always working toward one goal: uniting for the best interests of Black people worldwide. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest non-profit Black media organization - contact us at B…
This is the show that turns a crisis-response van into your argument against badge-first safety.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A barbershop history lesson where one chair opens onto abolition, politics, and Black economic autonomy.
This episode treats the Black barbershop as a site where haircuts, money, debate, and community overlap. It starts with a father’s memory of Nash’s barbershop and widens into Black barbers as more than service workers, moving through after-hours refuge for people running from…
Anti-racist education research, brought to practice.
Blunt faith talk under pressure.
Grassroots Black activism, live and unfiltered.
Black politics without soft edges.
Travel stories with borders, memory, and consequence.
This episode explores how Jamaican jerk cuisine originated as a survival and freedom food created by escaped enslaved people called maroons in Jamaica's cockpit country.
This episode explores three historical facts about Clarksdale, Mississippi, including its blues legends, role in the Great Migration, and a haunting ghost story, connecting them to the film 'Sinners' and broader black history.
This episode explores how eggnog, a popular holiday drink, has deep roots in Black history through Caribbean rum imports and the influence of formerly enslaved bartender Cato Alexander who popularized it in Black culture.
Historian Quincy Mills joins Black History Year to explore the Black barbershop as a cultural and economic institution.
This episode uncovers the erased era of Black Reconstruction after the Civil War.
Dr.
Darius Cross argues that Baton Rouge community violence intervention can provide resources and conflict mediation where police responses are mainly reactive.
CAHOOTS workers helped a young man put down a machete without forcing a potentially violent police encounter.
This episode explores the often-erased period of Black Reconstruction after the Civil War, highlighting how black political power led to significant reforms like public schools before being suppressed.
This episode explores how James Henry Woodson's defiant resistance against humiliation during slavery shaped his son Carter G.
This episode explores how Dr.
This episode introduces five lesser-known mythical creatures from West African folklore, highlighting their unique characteristics and potential for fantasy storytelling.
This episode explains how plea bargains serve as a hidden loophole in the 13th Amendment's allowance of slavery through incarceration, disproportionately exploiting black people by coercing guilty pleas without fair trials.
This episode introduces Von Miller's new podcast 'Free Range with Von Miller', which explores football, sports culture, entertainment, and society through interviews with athletes and artists.
This episode exposes the racist pasts of three beloved amusement parks—Coney Island, Six Flags, and Disneyland—highlighting discriminatory attractions and practices.
Darren and cultural writer Shamira Ibrahim examine why Black public figures including Kanye West, Azealia Banks, Jonathan Majors, R.
Black History Year’s Darren Wallace joins The Micheaux Mission to analyze Bacurau, a 2019 Brazil-France film about a fictional Brazilian town facing strange events after 94-year-old matriarch Carmelita dies.