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I'm your host, Elise Hew.

In the United States, today is Juneteen, the day that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans and celebrates black freedom, culture, and history.

Every child and every person deserves to find themselves in history.

And yet, for lawyer and founder of history makers, Julianna L. Richardson, that didn't happen.

And she spent decades refusing to let that be the end of the story.

Today, from our boardrooms to our classrooms on TV and social media,

debates are raging about whose history matters. Those who document their history are whose

society says matters. For the black community, that documentation has been elusive.

History Makers is the largest African American video oral history archive in the U.S.,

which is now permanently housed in the Library of Congress.

For Juliana, Black History in this country is rich and profound, and she argues it is

at risk of being lost forever. In this talk from 2021, she shares some of the unknown and incredible

legacies she's uncovered and makes the case for why preserving those histories isn't just an act of

memory, but an act of justice. We have in this country already lost a lot of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century

documentation of the African American experience.

We can ill afford to lose the 20th and the 21st century.

Preservation will determine if the black community

is viewed as value less or valuable.

That's coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk of the Day.

As a little black girl, I did not know that American history had anything to do with someone

who looked like me.

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