You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

Ben Franklin's world is a production dedicated to helping you,

learn more about how the people and events of our early American past

have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart. We have some really exciting projects of Hood at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

One of those exciting projects is the work our architectural preservation team

and curators are doing to get the Williamsburg Brayschool

open for your visitation. Now if you recall from episode 331, the Williamsburg Brayschool

is the oldest existing structure in the United States that we know is used to

educate African and African American children. Now as we prepare the Bray School

for you to visit and see we're having many conversations around the colonial

Williamsburg Foundation about the history of the school,

its scholars, and early Black American history.

And during one of these fascinating conversations,

my colleague Brandon Hewitt discussed how much he loves the research and work of Kevin Dawson

who is an associate professor of history at the University of California Merced.

Now I loved our conversation with Kevin back in episode 224 because I learned a lot about an area of

early American history that I didn't know about prior to our conversation with Kevin, and that's African and African American aquatic culture.

Using details from his book, Under Currents of Power, Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora,

Kevin revealed information about the African diaspora and how it brought African

peoples to the Americas and the Caribbean. Why it's important to view people as working, living,

and operating on both land and water,

...