Black History Month gets underway today, and you know what that means. Thought-provoking discussion and reading/viewing, yes…but also cringey leveraging of the event for 15%-off sales and tokenized surfacing of content. I have an absolute horror of even finding myself adjacent to the latter thing, to the point where I considered not even doing this thread.
But I also want to find out and share more — more books, more longform writing that reframes major cases, more true-crime commentary from Black voices. Ideally I/we do this year-round and not just in the year’s shortest month, obvs, but today let’s work where we are. What true-crime properties do you recommend for Black History Month?
Make this required reading in secondary school; I am not a crackpot.
And what areas/cases do you want some recommendations in for yourself? — SDB
For podcasts, I recommend "What Did You Do". Both hosts are black and have social work/mental health training and backgrounds and they cover a lot of lesser known cases as well as having different perspectives on bigger cases.
“At The Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America” by Philip Dray. I nearly threw up reading it, not because the language is inflammatory, but because the evil was so palpable. And so recent.
Through the Cracks - podcast created by Jonquilyn Hill about a young girl's disappearance from a homeless shelter is very well done! https://pod.link/1545174922
For podcasts, I recommend "What Did You Do". Both hosts are black and have social work/mental health training and backgrounds and they cover a lot of lesser known cases as well as having different perspectives on bigger cases.
“At The Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America” by Philip Dray. I nearly threw up reading it, not because the language is inflammatory, but because the evil was so palpable. And so recent.
I’ll never tire of recommending At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle McGuire.
Through the Cracks - podcast created by Jonquilyn Hill about a young girl's disappearance from a homeless shelter is very well done! https://pod.link/1545174922