Listen to the Reading with Rachelle Trailer
Listen to the trailer now, then catch the first episode tomorrow, November 6, 2024!
Finally! The Reading with Rachelle podcast is here! Tomorrow, November 6, 2024, my first episode will feature Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy discussing her timely new book (released today!), Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians. But listen to the trailer above today.
Here’s the focus of the podcast:
Each week on the Reading with Rachelle podcast, Rachelle brings history to life through conversations with authors, experts, and everyday people impacted by the week's book selection. Through storytelling, we connect with the history we were never taught in school. At a time when history is being used to divide us, let's learn how it unites us, and how Black history is not apart from American history, but how it's a part of American history.
Reading with Rachelle Podcast was years in the making
Like many things I do, the idea to host a podcast happened by accident.
While working on my second historical nonfiction book, Creating the Black Utopia of Buxton, Iowa, I researched the Black experience in the early 1900s. The deeper I dug, the more history I learned, meticulously captured in books I’d never read—Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B Du Bois; Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice by David Pilgrim; and Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Survived Slavery and Became Millionaires by Shomari Wills, to name a few.
Then May 25, 2020 arrived.
Like millions of others, I watched in horror, anger, and sadness as George Floyd was murdered in front of our eyes. Like millions of others, I felt so sad, tired, and angry that this kept (keeps) happening over and over again. How Black lives don't matter to many. How this has been the case historically.
So, I did something I'd never done before.
I sat on my couch, set up a camera, and talked about how I felt. Then, I posted it. I was too shy to share it, but sharing it wasn't important. I did it for me.
As the sadness and anger stayed with me, I kept asking myself, "What can I do?" I kept thinking about history we are taught and its contribution to racism.
How could I help change this belief that Black people are "less than" and worthless, beliefs that are baked into the foundation of our country and perpetuated by the erasure of Black people's contributions and experiences from textbooks and mainstream history?
Uniting Through History was born
By the end of 2020, I'd started a nonprofit, Uniting Through History, with the hope to share this amazing history I was learning with others in a way that people could connect with it and to create experiences that allowed them to immerse themselves in it. By doing this, I felt that people could truly, finally, "get" it.
My flagship project was the Hip History Contest, where students created three-minute videos sharing the history of Buxton, Iowa, to compete for scholarship prizes, the top one being $2,000. The second year, I added a matching prize for the winners' schools.
The students’ creativity and the teachers’ feedback continually amazed me. The willingness of the trailblazers who volunteered their time to judge—Charity Nebbe, Derrick Holmes, Marquas “MarKaus” Ashworth, Monica Henry, Steve Myers, Lovar Davis Kidd, and Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey, filled me with gratitude.
Though I had to pause the contest due to competing priorities—it was a ton of work, but I hope to bring it back in 2025—the online, monthly, History Book Club lives on. (Please join us!)
And now, the Reading with Rachelle podcast
Despite the fact that I've given more than 120 presentation, 60 media appearances, and appeared in three documentaries, I'm still shy on social media. Despite the fact that I had two successful podcasts interviewing bestselling authors before online podcasts were popular, I'm still nervous doing one.
But my passion to share the important history I'm learning gives me the strength to tackle these fears. I invite you to join me on this journey to discover the history we never learned—but wish we had—on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Audible, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
I can't wait for you to hear the first episode tomorrow!
I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Subscribe to the Weekly Roundup to get the links to what we’ve written about each week. Click the links below to learn more about the columnists. Become a paid subscriber to my column (or any other member’s column) and join us at the Holiday party.
Iowa Writers Collaborative Holiday Party 2024
Location: Harkin Institute on the campus of Drake University, 2800 University Ave., Des Moines
Date: December 13, 5-8 p.m.
Details: Appetizers, a short program, and great conversation.
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Awesome! I will be listening.
Thank you, Marcel!