What Stories Are Missing From Black History – and How Should We Tell Them?

02/15/23 • 34 min

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February is Black History Month, and in this episode of “Trending Globally,” you’ll hear from two scholars at Brown who are bringing to light overlooked aspects of the Black experience in America.

In the first half of the episode, Mack Scott, a visiting professor at Brown’s Center for Slavery and Justice, talks with Dan Richards about the complex relationship between Rhode Island’s Narragansett Nation and the state’s Black communities in the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s a vivid example of how America’s history of anti-Black racism is deeply intertwined with the history of America’s indigenous communities.

In the second half, Watson Senior Fellow Geri Augusto talks about a project she’s working on to uncover, preserve, and transmit the history of one of the Civil Rights movement’s most important and unique organizations – the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Geri is working with scholars and activists to bring this history to life and to find new, more inclusive ways to help people share their stories on their own terms.

Explore the SNCC Legacy Project, and the SNCC Digital Gateway.
Learn more about the theory and practice of Critical Oral History.
Read Mack Scott's recent article in the Providence Journal.
Photo by Danny Lyon. Learn more about the image.
Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

Explore the SNCC Legacy Project, and the SNCC Digital Gateway.
Learn more about the theory and practice of Critical Oral History.
Read Mack Scott's recent article in the Providence Journal.
Photo by Danny Lyon. Learn more about the image.
Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

Previous Episode

The New Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship

January 24th, 2023 marked an unsettling milestone: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the ‘Doomsday Clock’ forward to 90 seconds to midnight – the closest it’s been to ‘Doomsday’ since the clock was established in 1947.

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In this episode, the second in our limited series on the theory, policies, and practice of conflict escalation, you’ll hear from two experts rethinking how nuclear threats are understood and modeled.

Rose McDermott is a professor of International Affairs at the Watson Institute, and Reid Pauly is an assistant professor of Nuclear Security and Policy at Watson. Their paper “Decision-making Under Pressure: The Mechanisms and Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship” is the lead article in the current issue of International Security. In it, they reframe one of the most fundamental theories for understanding nuclear risks: nuclear “brinkmanship.” They highlight why conventional models of brinkmanship fail to fully explain how a nuclear crisis might unfold and explore what interventions are needed to prevent one from starting.

Next Episode

Can Democracy “Deliver the Goods”? Lessons from Kerala, India

If asked to think of parts of the world that have made impressive progress in social measures like literacy rates, life expectancy and infant mortality rates over the last century, you might first imagine a small, affluent country in Northern Europe or East Asia.

But in this episode, we explore a place that achieves remarkable results on these and other measures without having the high income levels typically associated with states that have broad-based social welfare programs.

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So how does Kerala do it, and what lessons can the rest of the world learn from its example? Listen to find out.

Read Patrick Heller and Olle Törnquist’s recent article on Kerala.

Learn more about Watson’s other podcasts.

Trending Globally: Politics and Policy - What Stories Are Missing From Black History – and How Should We Tell Them?

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] DAN RICHARDS: From the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, this is Trending Globally. I'm Dan Richards. February is Black History Month. And on this episode, we're going to explore work that two scholars at Brown are doing to bring to light overlooked aspects of the Black experience in America.

In the second half of the episode, you'll hear about a new project that's experimenting with how to archive and share the history of one of