On the season one finale of On the Yard, MSRC Director Dr. Benjamin Talton sits down with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, historian, author, and the inaugural Carter G. Woodson Endowed Chair in History for the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University.

The conversation covers Dr. Kendi’s new book, Chain of Ideas, which examines the origin and rise of “the great replacement theory” as a dominant political idea. They also discuss Dr. Kendi’s new position at Howard, his groundbreaking work studying anti-Black racism, and his goals for advancing influential scholarship on Black history, social justice, and American policy.

Episode Guide:

• 00:00 Episode and Guest Intro
• 01:59 The Inaugural Carter G. Woodson Endowed Chair
• 04:01 Making History Accessible and Building an Institute
• 09:45 Dr. Kendi’s Howard Journey
• 14:20 Imagining A World Without Whiteness
• 21:25 From Queens to Manassas
• 24:25 Finding Pride at FAMU
• 31:09 Replacement Theory Roots
• 42:37 Howard Legacy Plans

On the Yard is a production of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and is produced by University FM.

White is a race too

18:25: I think it's important to distinguish between white or even Black as a racial category and Black and white as a color. So that's the main reason. And the other reason, particularly as it relates to capitalizing white, is we're living in a moment in which racist theorists are pushing the idea that white people are not racialized, that majority-white districts are not about race, but majority-Black districts are. And so, I'm just normal. I'm human, right? And so I think that by ensuring that people understand that white is a race too.

Historians as storytellers

03:38: Historians, at our core, we should be storytellers, right? And, you know, part of, I think, what makes us, to me, the best storytellers of the past is that we're able to share the nuance and complexity and the context. But there's a way in which we can clarify that nuance, that context, that complexity in ways that people can understand.

 Can you imagine a world without whiteness?

14:12: Well, first, I would say that for the better part of human history, whiteness as this construct didn't exist. And so the construct of whiteness really only started to emerge in the 15th century. And so I think, to me, someone who can't imagine a world without whiteness is someone whose own conception of history is only a modern conception of history.

• Chain of Ideas by Ibram X. Kendi
• How to Be an AntiRacist by Ibram X. Kendi
• “Howard University Announces Dr. Ibram X. Kendi as the Inaugural Carter G. Woodson Endowed Chair in History” | Howard University
• The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
• Follow MSRC on Instagram and YouTube

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Just across the street from The Yard, sits Sankofa Video, Books, and Cafe. For nearly 30 years, Sankofa has provided an expansive selection of film and literature on the global Black experience, but it has also long been a community center for Howard University students and residents of northwest D.C.

For this episode of On The Yard, MSRC Director Dr. Benjamin Talton pays a visit to Sankofa Cafe and sits down with owner, storyteller, renowned filmmaker, and Howard alum Haile Gerima. They discuss Gerima’s films focused on the lives and experiences of people of African descent, including titles such as Black Lions, Roman Wolves and the cafe’s namesake, Sankofa. The conversation also delves into the commodification of Black stories by the film industry, Gerima’s experience filming in Ethiopia during the 1974 upheaval, and his experience teaching at Howard University.

Episode Guide:

00:00 Welcome to Sankofa Cafe

01:09 Meet Haile Gerima

01:46 Storytelling vs. Filmmaking

07:35 Black Cinema And ‘The Plantation Economy’

11:44 Sankofa Film And Symbol

15:23 Building A Community Institution

16:36 Haile’s Picks

21:04 Howard Years

25:36 Filming During Revolution

29:27 Ethiopia Identity Politics

31:36 Sankofa Community Power

34:38 Black Lions, Roman Wolves

38:17 Black Press Solidarity

39:42 Sankofa Cafe Farewell

On the Yard is a production of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and is produced by University FM.

Black stories aren’t made to be for entertainment

04:35: Entertainment is an industry by itself, but I think when you think of our story as entertainment, we do injustice to it, in my view, because we have not begun to tell our story. We have been people who've been robbed our stories. Our stories have been completely undermined, dwarfed, and to reclaim our story, I don't think we can do justice to it if we keep thinking entertainment. I think our story should be just a story, and the outcome should be it's from its own inherent originality and genuineness instead of forced entertainment.

Storytelling is the real battleground for Black stories

10:03: The issue here is, I think, especially Black people cannot afford to be entertaining because, fundamentally, all the contradictions are from the very idea of robbed people of their story. The story is the battleground. To me, the issue of race in America, and its crux, the crux of that issue is story, not being in charge of your story in the end.

Films as a staircase for growth

11:54: Every movie is a staircase of my own evolution and growth. And so, for me, without the films, the short films I did that are very dear to me in the sense they are my vehicle of growth in spelling cinema, trying to put my story cinematically.

• The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
• Follow MSRC on Instagram and YouTube
• Sankofa

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By the early 1970s, Black residents comprised nearly 73% of Washington, D.C.’s population, making it one of the most prominent majority Black cities in America.  As a testament to that identity, residents in D.C. nicknamed it “Chocolate City.”

Chocolate City was a rare urban space in the 1970s where Black-owned businesses thrived, go-go music dominated the radio stations, and Black people held genuine political power. Standing at the intellectual heart of this world was Howard University, the nation's most prominent HBCU, which featured as a crown jewel of Black academic and cultural life training generations of lawyers, physicians, artists, and activists who shaped the city and the broader African diaspora.

On this episode of On the Yard, MSRC Director Dr. Benjamin Talton sits down with Sonja Woods, university historian at MSRC, Howard alum Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, and Dr. George Derek Musgrove, associate professor of history at the University of Maryland and co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital.

The discussion covers the cultural touchstones that built Chocolate City and the figures who were transformative to D.C., cementing it as not just a political capital, but as a capital of Black intellectual life. They also discuss Howard University’s place in the city as a gathering ground for some of the most consequential Black thinkers, writers and scholars in the world.

Episode Guide:

00:00 Chocolate City Origins & Guest Introduction

03:34 Defining Chocolate City

05:12 Democracy Returns

08:45 The Art, Music, and Culture of Chocolate City

16:31 Howard University Shapes the City

18:13 Black Flight Tipping Point

22:15 Remaking Howard in 1968

26:28 Three-Year Campus Struggle

28:53 President James E. Cheek’s Howard Legacy

34:45 Working Beyond Political Party Lines

37:45 Reagan Visit and 1983 Protests

42:37 Jesse Jackson and D.C. Statehood

45:22 Final Reflections and Wrap

On the Yard is a production of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and is produced by University FM.

The triple threat of Chocolate City
10:22 [Dr. George Derek Musgrove]: It's just an exciting place to be Black. So, it's those three things. It's all of these people, the fact that they're beginning to vote for themselves and put together this really remarkably robust Black Power government, and they're just producing all this artwork. And I'll just add, to put a cherry on top, that Parliament, when it came out with "Chocolate City" in 1975, you know, is really acknowledging all of this. It's saying, look, this is the city where we have the biggest crowds. We do three or four shows a year, and they're all packed and sold out.

Blackness on everyday frequency
13:41 [Abdur-Rahman Muhammad]: When I stepped foot in Washington, D.C. I first came here on a high school trip, I believe it was '78, and '79 is when I actually visited the campus for the first time, and to say it was a culture shock is an absolute understatement. All of these radio stations, no matter where you flip the dial, Black music came out. You turn on the television, the news anchors are Black, the weather person is Black. You're hearing Black music everywhere, Black bookstores, Black little coffee shops.

A global vision for the Mecca
40:05 [Abdur-Rahman Muhammad]: He saw [James Cheek] Howard University as a great institution that could compete with the greatest institutions of the world, and he had a huge vision. His dedication to equity and healthcare, and the medical school and the hospital, he fought great battles, you know, to inaugurate those programs, the Sickle Cell Center, and what have you. He loved Black people. He loved his community, but he didn't tolerate nonsense either.

• The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center
• Follow MSRC on Instagram and YouTube
• Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital

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