Ildi Tillmann shares her unique childhood growing up in Hungary during the late Soviet era. Ildi eventually moved to the United States and ended up in Africana Studies after auditing a class on African history and wanting to learn about different cultures.

Listen now | You Don't Know Who You Are

An emancipatory revolution

Episode 3 of our new series featuring FBT co-founder Michael David Cobb Bowen and author Winkfield Twyman Jr. Mike and Wink compare their respective imagined roles as King(s) of (black) History Month.

Listen now | Spoken word written and performed by Elton Orlando Frank II

Lessons from the great proponent of black self-sufficiency. Booker T. Washington, a remarkable figure in American history, was born in 1856. Following the Emancipation Proclamation he emerged from the shackles of slavery with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Listen now | An interview with founder and executive director of the Black Cowboy Coalition Aisha McElroy

As I woke up this morning, the disconnect between performance of Blackness and reality grabbed my attention. I do not believe Blackness = Oppression today. It occurred to me a review of life in 1959 might be instructive.

Listen now (72 mins) | An interview with historian Bill Carrigan

An emancipatory revolution. What is unique about America is that it formulated an ideological repudiation of oppression and became the first society ever to foster an organized and principled movement for the abolition of slavery.

Celebrate a great American on this Fourth of July

The roots of chattel slavery and the myth of American exceptionalism

Black Americans have been used as means to an end throughout our nation’s history. - Erec Smith - Start a free trial today for full access.

Beyond tribalism and decline

Pioneering African American physician, author, and intellectual

Throughout most of the history of Western civilization, rhetoric was seen as one of the primary subjects of the liberal arts. After more than century of decline, the study of rhetoric is making a comeback. This is good news, since to combat political polarization, we can all benefit from the...

Personal reflections on our shared human condition

The sociologist Musa al-Gharbi on empire, Islam, and the hypocritical liberalism of Manhattan.

This essay discusses Cecilia Heyes’ groundbreaking new book Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking. Heyes’ point of departure is the claim that current theories of cultural evolution fail adequately to make a place for the mind. Heyes