They say that life imitates art. That's rarely as true when we consider the transformative, evocative, challenging, and inspirational work Black artists have been creating for decades.

White terrorists have devastated flourishing Black communities in the name of white supremacy from Rosewood, Florida to Elaine, Arkansas; Colfax, Louisiana to Charleston, North Carolina. 2021 marks the 100th year anniversary of one such event, the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Everything humanity has ever created – the good and the bad – started with imagination. But what if we could harness the power of imagination to build a truly just future for Black people?

He was a man of the people. A man who wanted one thing and one thing only: true independence for his country. But if the U.S. government had its way? He’d be shot dead before his 36th birthday.

Black people have always created beauty from the bleakest conditions. And to survive in America, we even had to create our own language.

“You can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill the revolution.” Was it a prophecy, these words spoken by the gunned-down Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton?

As Black people, we know we’re left out of the history books

Sculpting our future in the present is the only way we'll gain the power we need to make the idea of Black liberation a reality. Community Movement Builders (CMB) is doing that work. CMB is a Black-run group creating sustainable and self-determining communities. The organization's executive director, Kamau Franklin, sits with us to break down how CMB organizes and mobilizes to make Black economic and political freedom possible. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

Racism is a public health crisis. In the age of COVID-19, we've witnessed this firsthand as Black people perish at disproportionate rates - and it's not by coincidence. Medical ethicist and award-winning writer Harriet Washington illuminates the design of the systemic and medical racism at the root of it all. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

White supremacy is a horror you'll find at every turn. It’s the foundation of governmental policies that disadvantage us. It lives in policing systems that target us. And most dangerously, it has wormed its way like a parasite into the psyche of much of Black America. So what do you do when the killer's inside the house? Black psychologist Dr. Kevin Cokley takes us deep within to understand the psychological harm of white supremacy - and how to heal from the generational wounds it's inflicted. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

Forget everything you think you know about power and control. On this episode of Black History Year, abolitionist scholar Dr. Joy James explores one specific condition required for Black liberation to occur: a shift in the balance of power to we the people. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

American history is a litany of lies about Black people. One of the most egregious is that slavery's end opened the door to equality and freedom. We hear the knock of oppression - no matter how many “bootstraps” lectures we get, we know the truth: there is a debt to be paid. So today, we are having the reparations conversation with the economist Dr. William Darity. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

Credit unions, housing co-ops, CSAs... Black folks have been building and benefitting from cooperative economics for decades, particularly in parts of the economy where we’ve been cut out by the major institutions. As Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard points out, we all participate in some form of cooperative economics when we use the informal economy. In this episode, we dig into the power that we could amass if we took cooperative economics to scale. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

Black people are a spiritual people. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the concept of God was first birthed in Africa, but that didn't stop Europeans from copying our traditions and erasing us from Christianity. Dr. Anthony Browder opens the floodgates to the African origins of a faith so many in our community are committed to. It's time for the truth. It's time to talk about God. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

Black power has many forms: a fist in the air, a liberated mind, or the ownership of the ground upon which you stand. The founders of Africatown, a self-determined community of freed Black people in Alabama knew this kind of Black power. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston delved deep into this question when she interviewed Cudjo Kazoola, the last surviving member of the community that had founded Africatown. Dr. Natalie Robertson expands on Hurston’s work, the importance of Africatown, and the essential elements of Black empowerment.

Advertising, marketing, the entertainment industry and even the news media are selling us something. And what they’re selling usually isn’t good for us. Racist imagery like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are only the tip of the iceberg. Professor Gene Shelton reveals the racism behind advertising, and gets real about reclaiming our representation in media. This is a stirring conversation on how we all advance Black liberation when we up our media literacy game! BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

Food is family, culture and LIFE! As food writer Adrian Miller and Chef Rock Harper remind us, African food traditions are healthy, abundant and delicious. So how did we get to a place where we're told soul food and our food traditions are toxic? It's time to lift up our food culture! BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

Our story begins in Nubia and the Nile Valley, the Kingdom of Kongo, the Mali Empire, and the Great Zimbabwe. Dr. Runoko Rashidi reveals how the origins of Black people lie in great, ancient African civilizations and how our hidden history spans the globe. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

The Black vote is powerful. Just look at the massive amount of voter suppression and intimidation oppressors direct at the Black community. It confirms what we know: our vote is nothing to play with! So what will we do with all that power? The New Georgia Project's Nse Ufot has a few ideas. Ufot opens Season 2 of Black History Year by digging into voting rights, organizing, and what the 2020 election means for the Black community. BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation's largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!

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.

Kerry Washington and Gabrielle Union bring an inspiring level of wisdom, humility, humor and Black pride to this conversation on Black motherhood. Give it a listen and then share it with every mother, father, sister, brother, other mother and friend in your life. This is for all of us!

Medical treatment disparities for Black women is as old as America. Dr. Dorothy Roberts, a professor of Africana Studies, Law, and Sociology at University of Pennsylvania, has been producing groundbreaking work on race and gender that focuses our attention on urgent, contemporary issues in health, social justice, and bioethics. For this BHY, we dig deep with Dr. Roberts on the history and present legacy of forced sterilization, reproductive choice, and even the misguided idea that reproductive health is “a white woman’s issue.”

Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, even Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. all have a place in one of the most obscured parts of our history - the Black tradition of gun ownership. Douglas Jefferson, the Vice President of the National African American Gun Association, argues that for Black people in America to be fully vested as citizens, we have to be able to experience the fullest freedom every single liberty granted in the Constitution - including the right to lawfully bear arms.

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.