Welcome to Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Erin Minky.

Our guest today is historian Margaret Washington.

She's professor of History and American Studies at Cornell University.

Her work on the cultural, intellectual, and religious history of black Americans has earned

her awards and fellowships from Cornell University, Wesleyan University, and the national

endowment for the humanities.

Speaking at high schools, summer institutes, museums, parks, and local libraries, Dr.

Washington has contributed to numerous documentaries for PBS, the Discovery Channel, and the History

Channel.

Her book, Sojourner Truths America, was a guide for us not only in following Sojourner

Truth Story, but in seeing spiritualism within the big picture of American life.

Researcher Carl Nellis talked with Dr. Washington for this season of Unobscured.

They began their conversation with her perspective on what it meant to be a spiritualist

in 19th century America.

This is the Unobscured Interview Series for season 2.

I'm Erin Minky.

If you were a spiritualist in the 19th century, you looked upon life after death as a continuation

of contact with humans, especially your loved ones.

It was a situation where you're contact with people who had passed beyond the veil, could

be instructive.

It could be warnings, but there was this contact with people who had gone on.

It wasn't a break with earthly life and then life in the beyond.

...