Tagged: African American History

During the Great Depression, the New Deal funded a project to collect the narratives of former slaves.  Sarah Gudger came forward to give an account of her life as a slave in Buncombe County.  Her testimony was the same brutal story that is familiar to many of us.  She described a “hard life” of nothing but “work, work, work,” under the threat of abuse. 

Princeville, North Carolina is the first town created by African Americans in the United States. It was almost wiped out by Hurricane Floyd but survived. Now, it’s facing another threat.

Audits revealed that top-town officials may have been inappropriately using town dollars, and the state has taken over control of Princeville. Host Frank Stasio talks about the situation with Gurnal Scott, assistant news director at WUNC; and Rudolph Knight, a history columnist for The Daily Southerner in Tarboro.

  Taylor Branch's trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. -- "The King Years" -- is widely considered the seminal work on one of the 20th century's most important figures. But at 2,300 combined pages, the three volumes can be a bit daunting for even the most interested reader.

The origins of the Black Panther Party were as a group that wanted to provide self-defense and support to communities overlooked and abused by the authorities. American government and media portrayals dismissed the Panthers as thugs, but filmmaker Dante James wants to tell the true story of the revolutionary members of the radical organization.