African Cities

The deliberate devaluation of Blacks and their communities has had very real, far-reaching, and negative economic and social effects. An enduring white supremacist myth claims brutal conditions in Black communities are mainly the result of Black people's collective choices and moral failings. But there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can't solve. Noted educator, journalist, and scholar Andre Perry takes listeners on a tour of six Black-majority cities whose assets and strengths are undervalued.

In the summer of 1962, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) began to express interest in targeting one of the South's most brutally segregated cities. Nicknamed “Bombingham”, the city had witnessed the bombing of over a dozen Black homes and churches in the previous five years. A victory in Birmingham was a goal that would embolden the Civil Rights Movement like never before. Together with Ralph Abernathy and other SCLC leaders, King recruited and organized volunteers for sit-ins, demonstrations, boycotts, and protests throughout the city.

In Black on the Block, Mary Pattillo - a Newsweek Woman of the 21st Century - uses the historic rise, alarming fall, and equally dramatic renewal of Chicago’s North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood to explore the politics of race and class in contemporary urban America.

The powerful, long-repressed classic of Dallas history that examines the violent and suppressed history of race and racism in the city. Written by longtime Dallas political journalist Jim Schutze, formerly of the Dallas Times Herald and Dallas Observer and currently columnist at D Magazine, The Accommodation follows the story of Dallas from slavery through the civil rights movement and the city’s desegregation efforts in the 1950s and ‘60s.

In 2015, Tony Carpenter stumbled upon the plans for the Chronocar, a time machine conceived before it could be built by Dr. Simmie Johnson, genius, scientist, and son of a slave. Tony’s visit to 1919 to see the doctor and his lovely daughter Ollie turned into disaster, forcing the doctor to make a most difficult final decision. Now the timeline has worked its way back to 2012.

On November 3, 1979, as activist Nelson Johnson assembled people for a march adjacent to Morningside Homes in Greensboro, North Carolina, gunshots rang out. A caravan of Klansmen and Neo-Nazis sped from the scene, leaving behind five dead. Known as the “Greensboro Massacre,” the event and its aftermath encapsulate the racial conflict, economic anxiety, clash of ideologies, and toxic mix of corruption and conspiracy that roiled American democracy then—and threaten it today. In 88 seconds, one Southern city shattered over irreconcilable visions of America’s past and future.

Discover how - and why - Black, Indigenous, and people of color in America experience societal, economic, and infrastructural inequality throughout history covering everything from Columbus’ arrival in 1492 to the War on Drugs to the Black Lives Matter movement.