American history is a mess. We’re taught our ancestors were docile, child-like beings who were too incompetent to find a way out of slavery - but we’re expected to study and admire the slaveholding leaders of the American Revolution! We are taught that non-violent protest and forgiveness are the only ways we can achieve our goal of liberation, which can only be granted by benevolent white people. But that’s not the whole story: our true history is LOADED with examples of Black resistance. Dr. Brandon Byrd shows how history reveals the truth about how our ancestors and contemporaries have risen up against oppression, and he takes us inside the most successful Black rebellion - an event that shook the world and challenges the status quo even today.

No matter how many tickets we buy, or how many hours we watch, Black Americans still have very little influence over what film or television gets made - or how it portrays us. The images of Black people pumped out to the mainstream range from affirming to annoying to actively damaging. Morehouse’s Dr. Stephane Dunn helps us unpack how we got here. She is one of the founding members of Morehouse’s Cinema, Television, & Emerging Media Studies Program, serves as its program director, and takes us from "Birth of a Nation" to "Good Times" to Tyler Perry.

“I remember hearing somebody describe freedom as the ability to wake up in the morning and decide what you want to do with your day.” Dr. Boyce Watkins, founder of the Black Business School, has plenty to say about personal freedom, Black liberation, and self-determination. For Watkins, black economic advancement can’t be reduced to whether you are for, or against, capitalism, socialism or any other “ism.” Instead, it’s about wielding economic opportunities to empower ourselves and our people.

“We must face the fact that in America,” said MLK, ”the church is still the most segregated major institution.” For Black people, the church has traditionally been a place of restoration, renewal, community, and collective action. But even during the vigor and heat of the Civil Rights Era, with church leaders like MLK up in front, the role of Christianity did not go unquestioned in Black America. And now, with the “prosperity gospel” as loud as ever, we’re interrogating this pillar of our culture. The Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews of Faith In Action helps understand how we got here, and what we should be asking of our faith communities if we’re truly interested in Black liberation.

Learning your history makes you - and your people - stronger. As Black people, we know we’re left out of the history books. That the media images are skewed. That we need access to experts, information and ideas so we can advance our people. Black History Year connects you to the history, thinkers, and activists that are left out of the mainstream conversations. You may not agree with everything you hear, but we’re always working toward one goal: uniting for the best interest of Black people worldwide. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com.