Seizing Freedom
Highlighting true stories of Black people’s fight for liberation, progress and joy from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. Seizing Freedom illustrates the myriad ways Black people have sought and defined their own freedom in spite of the monumental forces at work to keep them from it.
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 39 minutes
- Episodes
- 40
- Years Active
- 2021 - 2022
Interview - Mariame Kaba
Season 2 Finale. Kidada speaks with activist and organizer Mariame Kaba about the ways many of us practice abolition without realizing it, how ordinary people have the power to collectively free them…
00:43:56 |
Tue 17 May 2022
Reframing the Narrative?
African Americans couldn’t seize much universal freedom as the brick-and-mortar of Jim Crow walled them off from their rights. Still, race men and women fought.
Following the death of three friends,…
00:53:58 |
Tue 10 May 2022
Interview - Julia Craven
Kidada speaks with health reporter Julia Craven about health and wellness for African Americans, both historically and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
They explore how health outcomes are …
00:36:38 |
Tue 03 May 2022
Dethroning Disease
Attendees of the 1914 “Fifty Years of Negro Health Improvement in Preparation for Efficiency” conference, with speakers including Booker T. Washington, heard staggering information about the Black po…
00:50:10 |
Tue 26 Apr 2022
Interview - Saeed Jones
Kidada speaks with writer, poet and social commentator Saeed Jones about the many facets of Black masculinity, how it has been shaped and reshaped over the years, and the challenges that have arisen …
00:38:17 |
Tue 19 Apr 2022
Inside Harlem's Speakeasies
Black workers were expected to take on “respectable” employment in the early twentieth century, essentially a racist dog whistle to keep them in the dirtiest, most dangerous and low-paying jobs. Whil…
00:39:41 |
Tue 12 Apr 2022
Interview - Jamelle Bouie
Kidada speaks with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie about the legacies of discriminatory housing policies in the United States and their impact, primarily on Black and other marginalized commun…
00:35:59 |
Tue 05 Apr 2022
The Land of Milk and Honey
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several million African Americans left the South for the North and West. They wanted to raise their kids in a place where they could live and work undisturb…
00:47:56 |
Tue 29 Mar 2022
Recommended Listening: Home. Made.
Today we're sharing an episode of Home. Made., a podcast that explores the meaning of home and what it can teach us about ourselves and each other.
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When Michael Atkins applied for a job as a teac…
00:23:29 |
Fri 25 Mar 2022
Interview - Paula Austin
Kidada speaks with historian Paula Austin about the shift in American society to protect childhood innocence in the early 1900s, and how that concept doesn’t apply to—or help us understand—the experi…
00:30:09 |
Tue 22 Mar 2022
Children of the Sun
Many Black Americans at the end of the nineteenth century relied heavily on themselves, prioritizing self-determination and securing their collective destiny through solidarity, self-help, and econom…
00:44:31 |
Tue 15 Mar 2022
Interview - Blair L.M. Kelley
Kidada speaks with historian Blair L.M. Kelley about how segregation grew out of pushback against Black upward mobility, and how Richmond, VA serves as an example of how boycotts can be a powerful to…
00:34:02 |
Tue 08 Mar 2022
Walk! The Streetcar Boycotts
With white supremacist strategies for segregated societies solidifying in towns across America’s South, Black people needed to respond in ways that would ensure the freedoms their predecessors had fo…
00:43:09 |
Tue 01 Mar 2022
Interview - Kinshasha Holman Conwill & Paul Gardullo
Kidada speaks with Kinshasha Holman Conwill, the deputy director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture; as well as writer, historian and curator at the Smithson…
00:45:05 |
Tue 22 Feb 2022
On The World's Stage
The 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago was an opportunity for the United States to showcase its spectacular growth and signal its arrival as a world power, but it failed to highlight Black Americans’ role …
00:44:23 |
Tue 15 Feb 2022
Interview - Adam Serwer
Kidada speaks with Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic who covers race, politics and justice, about the role of the Black press in America, both historically and in the present.
They look at h…
00:33:49 |
Tue 08 Feb 2022
The Fight of the Century
Black southerners and their allies were experiencing the brick and mortar of Jim Crow being installed in real time. Racial terror killings had been climbing, lynchings were becoming more shocking and…
00:46:49 |
Tue 01 Feb 2022
Introducing Season 2 of Seizing Freedom
Coming February 1, 2022.
The promises of Reconstruction were left unfulfilled. The violent system of Jim Crow was being built in real time, brick by brick. And Black people had vibrant debates about …
00:04:17 |
Tue 25 Jan 2022
Recommended Listening: 1865
While we work on the next season of Seizing Freedom, we think you'll enjoy listening to the podcast, 1865. In its new season, Ulysses S. Grant takes the White House, intent on rooting out corruption,…
00:08:56 |
Thu 20 May 2021
A Heritage Unique In The Ages
Season finale. The "freedom generation" of African Americans who were the first to experience emancipation knew that their fight for freedom was only just beginning. Even as they were earning new rig…
00:58:18 |
Mon 17 May 2021
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