Black History Unveiled

Before the podcast leaves Mali, I will address two allegations of plagiarism leveled at Disney. The first and weaker of the two claims is that Disney stole large parts of Mali's national epic, "The Epic of Sundiata," in creating the plot of the mega-hit "The Lion King."

The second is about one of the film's signature songs, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." The original version was written in 1939 by a South African man named Solomon Linda, who was paid pennies for the recording and died destitute, while American renditions of his song brought in millions.

The episode also highlights the battle against Disney that Linda's daughters have been waging to access missing royalties and have Solomon Linda's name recognized as the original composer.

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Today's episode is about the transatlantic slave trade, which is probably what many people think of first when they think of the history of Black Africa. Even so, it's a subject marked by misconceptions. People usually know that it happened, but not so much about why, how it started, or how far-reaching the consequences of it were.

Therefore, the following two episodes are a deep dive into transatlantic slavery. Part two will be more about the golden age of the slave trade, what life was like for those enslaved, and the obscene amounts of money the slave traders made.

In part one, we instead take a closer look at how the money that the Portuguese made from the West African gold trade pushed the Spanish to try to find their own sources of gold. But also on slavery as an institution and how the transatlantic slave trade first arose: how Portugal's exploration of Africa and the European so-called discovery of America worked together to create this tragic chapter in human history.

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In the second and final part of the series on transatlantic slavery, we take a closer look at the golden age of the slave trade. We examine what allowed the trade to become so lucrative and extensive and how slavery differed from place to place, establishing that the U.S. wasn't representative of the rest of America. We also explore how the slave trade institutionalized racism against Black people. Get bonus content on Patreon

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The premiere episode of Black History Unveiled is about a country where corruption was rampant, where a small elite lived well at the expense of the majority, and where international aid was essential for survival. It is also a story about a person who wanted to change all that and who genuinely seemed to want the population's best. The methods have been questioned, but the result spoke for itself.

This is the story of Thomas Sankara and his struggle to make Burkina Faso stand on its own two feet. A fight that cost him his life

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Those of you who've been listening to the podcast know that I often caution against the pitfalls of drawing parallels between various forms of slavery, especially when such comparisons are rooted in misleading or deceptive reasoning.

In this episode, I'm spotlighting a recent instance of this very issue. It's a striking example of a comparison that seeks to downplay the sheer scale and catastrophic impact of transatlantic slavery. It's whataboutism to an extraordinary degree.

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