History is always on our minds here at Notes from America, but particularly so right now,

we've, of course, just finished Black History Month. We're just starting women's history

month. And these annual celebrations are at least in part about crafting a new version

of our national story, a version that includes people who have been written out of it, often

because our lives and our contributions complicate the existing version of our national story.

As the Notes from America team has been thinking about our own role in crafting a new version

of the national history, we came across a really, really cool project that we thought maybe we

can try a version of this live on our show. So bear with me in a moment. I'll set up what we're

all going to do together. But first, let me introduce our guest. Juliana Richardson is the founder

of the History Makers. This is a project that uses video oral histories to capture the untold

personal stories of African Americans one person at a time. There are now more than 34

hundred oral histories in the History Makers database, some famous, some everyday people.

It's housed at the Library of Congress and available in a digital archive online. And among

its many purposes is to be used in educational settings. Juliana Richardson, thank you so much

for joining us. Thank you for having me, Kai. It's really nice to be here.

So this project was born from your own personal experience digging around in the archives

at the Shamburg Center for Black History here in New York as way back in the 1970s.

Can you share your origin story with us on this work? Sure. I grew up in a small town

in a cult Newark, Ohio, not New Jersey, but those of you who aren't on the East Coast.

And we've really never said anything about Black people. I mean, George Washington Carver and his

peanuts and slave brain. And so my nine-year-old brain couldn't compute that my white teacher was telling

me he could do all these things with peanuts when all we have been were slaves. And then one day,

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