Sarah E. Goode. James Forten. Lonnie Johnson. George Washington Carver. Lewis Howard Latimer. These trailblazers—and many others—lived complex lives in complex times. Yet in our eagerness to honor them, do we privilege their inventions over their humanity?
For a very long time there was this assumption that the banjo was about the whitest instrument that you could possibly imagine. … It is actually an instrument created by the African diaspora.
Rhiannon Giddens, Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and banjo and fiddle player
The artist was Harriet Powers, an African American woman from Athens, Georgia. Born enslaved, Powers would transcend that to express her powerful, creative vision in stitched squares of fabric.
How do history and the natural world inspire art? Hear what happens when National Geographic Explorers sit down with some of our favorite musicians in this four-part series. In episode 1, available now, Rhiannon Giddens—a singer, songwriter, and banjo and fiddle player who is also biracial—says she felt like an outsider in folk and bluegrass music until she started researching the history of the banjo.
What happens after you uncover buried history? The 1619 Project was a New York Times Magazine endeavor that explored the ways the legacy of slavery still shapes American society. National Geographic’s Overheard talks to journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones about how politics affected the project—and what it means to be in the middle of this social reckoning. Listen to the podcast, and watch the six-part docuseries on Hulu, streaming now.
Music on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was once as popular as the sounds on Beale Street and Bourbon Street. Community groups are working to keep its legacy alive: “There is such a gap in the knowledge of the African American community from its heyday here in Chattanooga.”
From tracking the seasons to “following the gourd” to freedom, knowledge of the stars was imperative for enslaved Africans. Their descendants are reclaiming those ties.
When Hiram Rhodes Revels traveled to Washington in 1870, he brought a historic piece of paper with him: a handwritten document certifying his right to serve in the United States Senate.
Their list of achievements is endless, yet historically Black colleges and universities have been chronically misunderstood and underfinanced since their founding in the 1800s.
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