And now on the BBC world service. It's time for the documentary, I'm I'm a lad and am speaking to the archives, elevating the often overlook stories of african americans. This is archiving black america. Why were you big history is important, oh mainly the us make the same mistakes over again and be adult no history or learn from history, not that that ever it seems that do anybody any good! I don't know anybody pays attention. I think history is very important, because if you don't understand, your history are doomed to repeat it. One of the challenges and being african american is a lot of times for history is cut off. It's either cut off because records work.

After are people had to move around a lot. The our history is determined by what we leave behind by letters and newspapers by books and hard drives. It's the knowledge we passed down the generations, but what is recorded largely depends on what materials remain, and whether the archivists historians and librarians those tasked with preserving history and legacy, deemed these materials as worthy of being saved and for a long time centuries, even the materials and thus the histories of

I can americans have been often overlooked, often buried and often hard to piece together in any country where discrimination exists. The official history is told by the victors. What's lost in this process is incalculable, because what we lose ultimately is the truth. As a nonfiction editor and writer, I have devoted my career to investigating the narratives we ve been told and their archives to hondo. History is an act, deputy and who are working to highlight the truthful story of black americans, I decided to have conversations with the librarians and I started to ask them what they had in their collection about the black experience, and that's when I panicked, because

they didn't have anything and then I go into the nations, libraries and archives, and I find out we're not their archives. Julian Richard said, is right to panic. Black people are integral to the story of america and at the same

in time the proof of our contributions has been systematically denied. What is being debated and side in right now is, who has now, you know, doesn't, and you don't have value feudal preserve it. Juliana was my first boss. I worked for her at the digital archive. She conceived in two thousand to capture the stories of african americans. It's called the history makers to see every connected with chile in thirteen years after my internship with her in two thousand and seven, I almost got into a fist, refined and my early years with someone who I was courting ground fund raising, and you know he was basically saying. There's no urgency and black people didn't do anything before this of rights. Where was it fuelling when you got those comments?

with that kind of fuel. For you to keep going. The project was an appeal battle, but at the same time it was a lot of discovery. You would find things all the time. Like one of my first interviews, the first sheer was a man named colonel thomson. He was one of the dusky airmen and I got there and I knock on the door and he had all these boxes for me and he had been preparing for four days the dusky airmen for the first african american flying unit. In the u s military, they were. during the second world war. A time when Jim crow laws enforcing racial segregation were alive and well in many eu states, and he sits me there and it turns out like he was the chief document area for the tuscan airmen

my hobby was taken pictures evil and I wasn't working overseas. My wife, I gotta go a lot of members up there So movement camera because part of my job was to see those aeroplanes were kept, combat, ready and sat me down and he said: do you know of the golden thirteen? And I said: oh no, I don't know about the golden thirteen. He goes. They were the navy's version of the tuskegee airmen and the far left living in the country and one lives upstairs, and he wants to talk to you also. So that is what I'm talking about. That's when you knew that you are on the right path and that's how we

The collection, one name leading to the other name leading to other name. People don't realize that there is an inherent urgency to this kind of work, especially when you are talking about oral history when you want to get a record of a person's life from that person. You are working against time. That's right. We often say that, and I dont know who first originated this term, but each each death represents a library burning. Each history make her interview begins with a series of general questions: favorite food favorite place too vague,

I am grateful to be alive and to see blue in green and yellow red and white. I like all tellers one of the more wound and chile and its history makers is poet, thinner and activist. My Angelo. This is done. Until these response to julia anna asking about her favorite color, I thought today to speak about myself and my history. I would wear a kind of blue because it's beautiful first and also because african americans began writing the blues and some of the spiritual, even really. indistinguishable from blue, so web, is how long baby? How long has it?

in train been gone, are the spiritual how long oh, my lord, how long before and because one so blue is very important to me and blues even more important. This is the thing that drives me crazy, there's this idea of american music, which is white, music right and black people, of course, influenced american music with their nifty rhythms and the blues and the jazz. maybe a few enlightened, rock and roll right. So, the more that I dig and read the more than a real is actually no merit music in a european african fusion. From the very beginning and without black people, you have nothing, ran and get ends, like my angelou else, from north carolina, reanimate grammy award winning position and considers herself to be

a kind of amateur historian. Her work is all about elevating the forgotten breeds of american folk music. For me, the story of the forgotten black string ban is absolutely instrumental arden upon to understanding america, music dimensions of string bans is particularly before emancipation. so we're talking seventeen hundreds, really eighteen, hundreds dimensions of string bands only say when it's a white string band, because otherwise it was understood that it was a black string band and only takes a generation to forget that this even happened. You know, which is why the frank johnson story is so important because to have a figure before recorded music. Of that stature being uncovered is just mind. Blowing fiddler frank Johnson may well be the most important and forgotten american musician of the nineteenth century. He was able to free himself and his family from slavery

but the earnings he made from his fiddle playing. We can see the song lists that he played. We can see the different functions that he played. Black string bands played highland flings, you know they. They played everything, frank and his band played for town ceremonies, agricultural affairs. They played for every kind of celebration from weddings to funerals for black folks and white folks alike. But why is the music frank Johnson played the string band the banjo the fiddle now seen as the music of white america. When you have the shift from the turn of the century into the twenties, you have three things happen, so you have the great migration massive shifts of demographic from the south to the north in the midwest

and that means that all those markers of life that you're used to let corn stockings asked where you'd have banjo playing skirt answers. You'd have banned ripley anyway, don't stuff up in new york city right anyway. in new jersey. You know what I'm saying it's like: no, we want to do the cool stuff up here. It's a different vibe, it's a different vibe and it's a different function. The music has a different function, so functionality changes and then you have the birth of recorded music rate. If they would go into the town saturday. They would report why people are wish. It wasn't the simplistic, but it was they put it in the paper, nagel all the fiddle. Music, hillbilly music come saturday, sunday blues, and if you are black, true man,

and you went on saturday they bill. I come back when his boots, they were blue, do now and then the third thing supports that, which is why supremacy big right so Henry ford, who was like a noted, xenophobe and racist, you know as well as car cargo decides that he wants to promote american, why ethnic music? So they start. These record series in the advertisements are like, Do you long for the good old days of the barn, dance and blah blah? These were the days where the band's playing would have been black yo. You know, but there are right now are history, the sudan and, as you started to learn

more about the roots of this music, to bring you kind of a different understanding of your own ancestry, of your own roots. Absolutely the more that I started studying the roots music, the more I started, understanding my grandparents and sometimes when I evoke that particular black woman voice, because I do it without thinking about it and then I was trying to kind of analyze it. It's like I'm opening up this channel myself and my grandmother is there. You know, is actually kind of making me emotional talking about it right now, but sorry, she's, mended, quite a few years, but you know some of these songs hit me in a really powerful way, and I know that that that's I'm feeling that connection to them worse

Where are you if you do come right, I'm gonna wanted to new? the music, I only tell her stories. It also has the power to save them. This was the case with fisk university, a historically black college in nashville tennessee. The school was set up and eighteen sixty five. The year the american civil war ended, which marked the official end of slavery in the united states. But five years after the institution opened it's doors to droves, of formerly enslaved people hungry for an education, fisk found itself

on the brink of closure, riddled with that in eighteen. Seventy one, georgia, why? Who was the treasure of the university? He recognizes a talent in certain students which is singing and he forms a troop who those out on tour and northern? U s and they, shall we say the school and those are the fish jubilee fingers the money, the first jubilee thinkers rays from touring ensured that the universities doors kept open deletes a minor harris is the special collections, siberian fisk? What The things that I think people are more aware of. Is the slaves bible. It's a bible that was specifically added for slaves in the west indies and his bible omits passages about

freedom or anything that discusses not obeying your master and saw the book of exodus is removed as a is is one of the most important things because that we know where we are the only institution that has a copy of this bible in the? U s, historically, black colleges and universities, or each BC use like fisk, have been some of the few places that have consistently preserved black hester. I think it receives. They are that safe space, because you have a mutual The standing of experience you know will support these collect. as we cherish them. They mean something beyond just having papers sitting in bonn

since they mean that we have a legacy that we have a history. I'm also wondering if you think that there is any thing, is there anything missing from the archive I kind of which we have more? black women voices from the archive the dual silence, her of racism and sexism has meant that black women are especially left out even from within black people's own archives. I set up my own archive price,

act race weapon because of this desire to know more about black feminist pioneers from the eighteen, hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. But it also came from a place of anger, anger that I spent so many years, not knowing who they were. Women like Pauline hopkins, a nineteenth century journalist, novelist and playwright, who advocated for racial and gender equality and everything, she produced. Pauline Elizabeth hopkins was a writer and an early period in time. Where it was unheard of for a black woman to own copyright, to her work like have a have her contracts into things like she was official official, and so have a small collection of her works. Is is one box, but is

bright, so many people to our archives, because it's literally nothing else anywhere else. I found that exploring history often brings about our hama events like these times of discovery. That feels like a curtain being drawn back and there's one place in particular where many of these moments have come to me. If I take the c train from my part of brooklyn heading north, then change to the two or the three I can be at five fifteen malcolm x, boulevard in harlem in about an hour. This is the address of the schomburg center for research in black culture in nineteen, twenty six, the new york public library

but bibliophile and scholar, Arturo Schomberg, ten thousand item collection, Arturo Schonberg, began collecting because he was told when he was a student one of his teachers that there was no black culture and there was no black history and being black importer. Rico. He spent his life proving teacher wrong and his ten thousand bucks eleven million items. This is the director of the schomburgh Kevin young. I think one of the things that's important to know It takes eleven million items to start to tell the story black culture It isn't a solitary story. Is it only a simple story, but I also think it unifying story we don't collected so that we have it we collected so that you can see it. It was in the schomberg archives that a young, Julian Richardson first realise just how inextricably linked black people were to every part of american culture.

In fact, I can remember the day like it was yesterday. It was a fall day and I am listening to this song, I'm just wild about harry, which I had always associated with president harry truman, to learn for the first time that it was written by nobles. This one you'll be blake the nineteen twenty one production of shuffle along on broadway, and I can't even begin to tell you. It was like a defining moment, because I saw that black people had done things. I was the first in my my family to go to college. I couldn't point to people who had done these things. We know that archives are living things.

And archives aren't just the books in the paper, but also, I think, we're talking about people, the schomburg centre and archives and black history, its collective endeavour. You know we need you to save and speak about these things. I don't mean you personally, I made your we need I'll, be part of that story. There's things we can only find a chamber unique items. I give you an example when I first got two schomberg it so we had to copies of climate chaos, harlem shadows night. This is the book in nineteen, twenty two that many people say kicked off. Parliament has isis country, I requested it, and the two copies came in one was signed by clive mackay to the negro division, and then the other one was signed to Arturo schomburgh himself with his most famous poem. If we must do

I ran out on the front and papers sign, It says for a a s can be talking about the poem by then jamaican claude mckay. If we must die here is early nineteen hundreds when it was written, but it says, is as relevant to the struggle today as at any time It's a laugh! It's a poem literally published in nineteen nineteen, it's about red summer and surviving what used to be called race riots, but we might just called like sort of violence against black folks. You gotta give us the poem okay, because if we must die, let it not be like hall's hundred and pinned in an inglorious spot while round and spark the mad and hungry dollar.

Was making our mark at our cursive lot. If we must die, let us nobly die. So that our precious blood may not be shed in vain and even the monsters we defy shall be constrain the honor of the dead or kinmen we was meet the common foe and, though far outnumbered, let us show us brave and for their thousand blows deal one deathblow. What, though, before us lies the open grave, like men will face the murderous, cowardly pack fresh, the wall dying,

adding back and yeah those words mean they sing solo chilled out hooked up much by when we think about archiving the past. So much of what comes to mind is tangible, like the old claude Mckay book, that Kevin felt with his two hands, but as we look to the future, a huge part of how we do that work now is through digital archives, both collecting digital born materials like emails and tweets, but also digitizing. The archives we are

Have the fragile paper and crackly tapes archives are also taking new forms, they're moving out of the traditional institutions like libraries and museums, which have long discouraged or prevented access to people of color instead they're moving into spaces with significantly fewer barriers to entry, namely the internet. The curator and writer kimberly drew uses digital platforms to elevate the work of black artists. putting their art beyond the realm of galleries and auctions,

really only began to uncover the enormous breadth of black artists for herself during an internship at the studio museum in harlem, when I was at the sitting museum problem, my second or third week, I very vividly remember the day that I largely bosky out was. I found this picture of and Andy Warhol I was like. Ok, I know, warhol his. But who is this black guy? You know like that's where I was at and it was an interesting moment because it made me feel really angry, almost as if like, where has this information been hiding from me? Who was this black warhol figure? Why did I know who he was so then? What did you do once you had this information? I started a blog called black contemporary are on tumblr, because you

I have to go into tumbler as an expert. I posted, and still you know whenever I do: post artworks the name of the artist the title of the work and the year it was created and that's it. I didn't think at the time of development that there was- and this is the thing that like makes me so sad to this day. I didn't think that there was language to talk to or about black artists. I didn't I think it existed, because I was never exposed to it. I started my race women project specifically on instagram, because I wanted as many people as possible to have access to these women's stories, but I've also wondered about the potential drawbacks of archiving and spaces like social media that are essentially ephemeral. Because a social media relative newness there isn't the infrastructure to properly archive and the ways in which, like really cement things. If that makes sense

like the library of congress, is trying to make record of twitter, but it just doesn't hold the same way that like if I write something for a conduct, ass publication, for example, it goes into the containers. Archive for all time an eternity, and so I ve been trying to find different avenues to place different things so that there is always an opportunity for future generations without extreme work. To find little morsels left behind. I often think of archives, not just as objects to preserve, but is vital. Lifelines two hour passed into our future. They are dynamic. Force is shifting and moving as we evolve

finding us at just the time when we need the most kevin young director of the schomburg. Again. What I see when I see the archive is this giant chorus and this chorus of of people talking to each other, sometimes across time, these stories can hold incredible power. The kind that fills you shakes you down. And allows you to see more clearly who you are. where are you came and what you can be. When something happens in the world, even this terrible pandemic. We have centuries worth of information and helps people understand and putting contacts. Baldwin says and I'm not gonna get the quote, write something like you feel like you're there. the person who suffered in the world- and then he read, you start to see the ways that We as african americans, have

survive for centuries and passed down knowledge, and it's that kind of grit. termination all those things that I think about what I'm trying to get some food for day twenty. In a and like I gotta, be a you know, they live there. They were making stuff, not that I gotta make these black IPCC right, archives are much the same. You like I gotta you know, show and see the ways that I'm connected to this long history of knowledge, and that this alleged is to sustain me. You know that sustenance. I take as a real thing. Archiving black america has presented Me, my milan, it was produced by sasha Edi Lindner and it's a whistle down production for the BBC world surpass thank you for listening. There will be more from the documentary podcast soon

The documentary is just one of our bbc world service podcasts. There are many others to choose from six of the years are under arrested on criminal charges in the city of baltimore police officers work just turning a blind eye to drug dealing. There's more patrol car driving through the area. These guys are openly dealing drugs. They were working with drug dealers have been the go to guy to sell millions of dollars in drugs pay. I got a new supply now comes from the police department. If you want to take down bad cops? You need good ones, keeping a road colleagues under surveillance. That was what we would call the dirty call the criminal call tomorrow. You can track recovery order where this is the car papa to draw your hey, help me out of your friend, but is it enough to help victims? Fine justice? You know that draws its plan

Bad cops from the BBC world service we want you to do is tell your said of whatever search for bad cops wherever you get your pod.