12:00: Special programming — "Witness History: Black History Month"
1:00: Special programming — "Selected Shorts: Changing the Narrative"
We bring you special national programming today on Connections.
In our first hour, it's a new special hour-long edition of "Witness History" from the BBC World Service, bringing together some incredible stories about the Black experience. Told by people who were there, we hear stories that are fascinating, harrowing, and inspiring.
Then in our second hour, a special program hosted by author, educator, and activist DeRay Mckesson. "Selected Shorts: Changing the Narrative" celebrates Black authors and politicians who have rethought and rewritten the narratives we tell ourselves about our shared history and who we are as a nation. Shirley Chisholm was America’s first Black congressional representative, and shares her not easy route to power in the essay “Unbought and Unbossed,” read by Crystal Dickinson. Literary giant James Baldwin writes to a beloved nephew about the line between acceptance and integration in “My Dungeon Shook,” read by Christopher Jackson. Sonia Sanchez reflects on Malcolm X’s profound effect on the residents of Harlem in “Homegirls on St. Nicholas Avenue,” read by Marsha Stephanie Blake. And, in a final story by Percival Everett, a narrator delivers an unexpected embrace to the most potent of symbols below the Mason-Dixon in “The Appropriation of Cultures,” read by Wren T. Brown.
