Episode 1: Desire, Prosperity, Fortune, Hope
Far from promising the fruits of equality and justice for all, the United States was founded on white supremacist ideals. Given this legacy, how do Black parents decipher and explain American history to their children? Or, even what it means to be Black in the US? These are questions that host and writer Carvell Wallace and ACLU Legal Deputy Director and attorney Jeffery Robinson have had to confront. Their answer has been to look more closely at the past and at the laws that continue to enshrine and reinforce racial inequity. This is how we both make sense of the present and shape a more equitable future for generations to come. Hear them start this journey into some of the lesser-known moments in America’s history which will reckon with the state of voting rights, the wealth gap, healthcare, policing, and the carceral state.
Featuring the performance of a new work by city of Boston poet laureate Porsha Olayiwola.
Additional Resources:
- i shimmer sometimes, too by Porsha Olayiwola, Button Poetry, 2019
- Genealogy Bank: African American Slave Trade: Ships & Records for Genealogy
- The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
- Slavery and the Law in Virginia
- 1740 South Carolina Slave Code
- Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions of the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol. 3 (Virginia) [1827]
- Ratification of the Constitution by the State of Virginia; June 26, 1788, Yale Law School, The Avalon Project.