The ‘Beautiful Experiments’ Left Out of Black History

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cultural historian Saidiya Hartman introduces Kai to the young women whose radical lives were obscured by respectability politics, in the second installment of our Future of Black History series. The MacArthur fellow is the author of “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals,” which offers an intimate look into some of the Black lives that have been seemingly erased from the history books -- simply for not fitting into the box. Through a series of readings, we explore the complicated role of Black intellectuals like W.E.B DuBois, the Black family and how a damaging moralism continues to inform the policing of marginalized communities, public space and American cultural politics today. Companion listening for this episode: “The Origin Story of Black History Month” (01/31/21) To launch our Future of Black History series, we turned our complex relationships with Black History Month to curiosity in order to uncover how a week-long celebration of Black Achievement became the month-long observance that we know today. “The Life and Work of Ida B. Wells” (05/08/20) We look back at the life of the oft-overlooked journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, whose intrepid reporting contributed to the fight for racial injustice in America. “The United States of Anxiety” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on WNYC.org/anxiety or tell your smart speakers to play WNYC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the United States of Anxiety, a show about the unfinished business of our history and its
0:07.1	grip on our future.
0:08.1	They never talk about the girls and the women, they only talk about the men and the boys.
0:11.9	They don't never talk about our daughters who are slain by police officers.
0:15.2	Somebody said to me back in 85, I've never seen the stories I've heard around my kitchen table told to me by my mother and my grandmother reproduced in
0:25.4	print I've never seen that. Don't look down on the youngsters because they want to
0:28.6	have shiny things it's in our genes you know what I'm saying we just don't all know
0:32.3	our history.
0:33.0	We have been here, we have always been here.
0:35.0	It's just we haven't been seen.
0:37.0	This is a historic day for too long.
0:41.0	New York has permitted police to target New Yorkers solely for their gender expression
0:47.6	and frankly for their existence.
0:50.1	Moments like these are what our ancestors fought for.
0:57.6	Welcome to the show, I'm Kay Wright.
0:59.7	It's February and we're thinking about Black History Month and I am thinking about why I've
1:04.7	always been such a Grinch about it despite my general obsession with learning Black
1:09.5	History. So in last week's show we heard the origin story of Black History Month, which was a much more bold project than I understood to be honest.
1:17.5	Carter G Woodson wanted to foster a public history for black people. Because at the time, and this was just 50 years after slavery we really did need to be reminded that we have a history that's part of our humanity
1:30.0	but as I learned that origin story, it also made me ask,
1:33.0	who's the WE in that statement?
1:35.0	And a project like that, one that's meant to prove something about our worth,
	...

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