Unpacking History Interviews

For this innovative series, Cleveland Metropolitan School District gave two reporters unprecedented access to a classroom at Almira Elementary School to show readers the enormous challenges of educating children in poverty and what the school district is doing to overcome them. We discuss how the student’s navigate their lives, what services are available to them, and how the schools work to educate and care for our City’s young people.

Professor Painter discusses her book, THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE. Prof. Painter begins with discussing just what it means to be “white” and how ideas of whiteness developed using Ancient Greek and Roman sources.

Professor Leslie Picca discusses her work, Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage, which examines the racial attitudes and behaviors exhibited by whites in private versus public settings.

rofessor Hasan Jeffries discusses his book Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt. We talk about what made this rural Alabama County such an important and complicated location in the Civil Rights struggle. How school desegregation and voting registration was still accomplished in the shadow of some of the era’s worst white terrorism. And how the Black Power slogan was born, and the Black Panther symbol took on meaning.

Professor Barbara Krauthamer discusses her book, Black Slaves, Indian Masters, which examines the role of slavery in the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations.

Professor Pamela Newkirk discusses her book, Diversity Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business. She exposes the decades-old practices and attitudes that have made diversity a lucrative business while they fail to realize diversity. We discussed the history of exclusion, the role of Presidents Johnson and Reagan, and why higher education is such a battleground for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Professor Newell discusses her book, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery, which explores the enslavement of Indians by the English Colonists in New England.

Professor Bjørn Southard discusses his book, Peculiar Rhetoric: Slavery, Freedom, and the African Colonization Movement. Prof. Southard outlines how the African Colonization Movement hoped to reach some middle ground between southern enslavers and northern abolitionists in order to solve the fears both had about a free black population in the US. While the Colonization idea was supported many by wealthy whites, free blacks actually interacted with the logistics and relocation to Liberia. We end our conversation discussing Lincoln’s complicated relationship to and thinking around the Colonialization project.

Professor Vida Johnson discusses her 2022 Brooklyn Law Review article, White Supremacy’s Police Siege on the United States Capitol. Professor Johnson details the failures of the Capitol Police, the unsettling involvement of active law enforcement officers in the January 6th Insurrection, and how White Supremacists continue to infiltrate and plague police departments.

Professor Fran Shor talks about his book, Weaponized Whiteness which interrogates the meanings and implications of white supremacy and, more specifically, white identity politics from historical and sociological perspectives.

Professor Kathryn Gin Lum discusses her book, Heathen: Religion and Race in American History