On the slave ships that sailed between Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and the West Coast of Africa from the 16th through the 19th Centuries, the crews included not just white sailors but also Black mariners, including a significant number of crewmen who were themselves enslaved. These enslaved mariners were not just a source of inexpensive labor but were also valued for their geographic, linguistic, and cultural skills, and they, in turn, could use the opportunity of labor on slave ships as a means of social mobility and eventually legal emancipation, or sometimes the chance for flight. Joining me in this episode to discuss these mariners is Dr. Mary E. Hicks, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Bahia Sunrise,” used under the Envato Market License - Music Standard License. The episode image is “Night Chase of the Brigantine Slaver Windward by HM Steam-Sloop Alecto,” Illustration for The Illustrated London News, by Frederick James Smyth, May 1, 1858; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “A Brief History of Brazil,” by José Fonseca, The New York Times 2006.
• “A Chronology of Brazilian History,” The Atlantic,” February 1956.
• “2.3 The African Slave Trade and Slave Life,” Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship.
• “4.2 Slavery and Abolition in the 19th Century,” Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship.
• “The Contraband Slave Trade to Brazil, 1831-1845,” by Robert Conrad, Hispanic American Historical Review 1 November 1969; 49 (4): 617–638.
• “‘We need to tell people everything’: Portugal grapples with legacy of colonial past,” by Sam Jones, Gonçalo Fonseca, and Philip Oltermann, The Guardian, October 5, 2020.

Ruth Reynolds, born in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1916 to a strict Methodist family, may have seemed an unlikely ally to the cause of Puerto Rican independence, but she devoted her life to what she saw as her “sacred and patriotic duty” as an American to convincing her country to withdraw from Puerto Rico “so that our nation may stand before the world free from any suggestion of imperialist ambition.” Facing surveillance by the FBI and insular police and even incarceration for her views, Reynolds never backed down from her solidarity, but she was always careful to listen to the people of Puerto Rico and never to impose her view on them. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Lisa G. Materson, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico's Independence.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is the original mid-19th century fast-tempo arrangement of “La Borinqueña,” which later as a slower arrangement became the regional anthem of Puerto Rico; the performance is by the United States Navy and is in the public domain; it is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is from the arrest of Carmen María Pérez González, Olga Viscal and Ruth Reynolds, January 4, 1951, taken by Benjamin Torres, and archived at the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad de Puerto Rico; the photograph is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “Ruth M. Reynolds Papers,” Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Centro Library & Archives, Hunter College, CUNY.
• “Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives,” Library of Congress.
• “Puerto Rican Independence Movement [video],” American History TV, C-Span, April 13, 2018.
• “Remembering Don Pedro: An Online History of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.”
• “Puerto Rico’s Independence Movement: What Americans need to know about the PIP and Puerto Rico's Independence,” by Javier A. Hernandez, LA Progressive, Originally posted January 27, 2025 and updated February 12, 2025.
• “How the U.S. silenced calls for Puerto Rico's independence [video],” by Bianca Gralau, August 26, 2021.
• “The Case for Puerto Rican Independence,” by Alberto C. Medina, Current Affairs, April 5, 2024.

In March 1972, Selma James distributed a pamphlet that declared: “If we raise kids, we have a right to a living wage. . . WE DEMAND WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK. All housekeepers are entitled to wages. (Men too).” Soon it was a global movement, with Wages for Housework branches in the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and several other countries, and autonomous groups like Black Women for Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Emily Callaci, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Get yourself a broom and sweep your troubles away,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer, with lyrics by James Brockman and Billy Rose, and performed by Frank Crumit and Frank E. Banta, in New York on December 19, 1924; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a Wages for Housework poster drawn by Jacquie Ursula Caldwell in 1974, From the collection of Silvia Federici copyright Creative Commons, available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “A Woman’s Place,” Selma James, 1953.
• “Women and the Subversion of the Community: A Mariarosa Dalla Costa Reader,” by Mariarosa Della Costa, 2019.
• “Statement of the International Feminist Collective,” July 1972.
• “Wages Against Housework,” by Silvia Federici, 1975.
• “All Work and No Pay [video],” Made by the Wages for Housework Campaign with the BBC TV's Open Door series, 1976, posted by Global Women’s Strike, January 15, 2023.
• “The women who demanded wages for housework - Witness History, BBC World Service [video],” Witness History, BBC World Service, February 12, 2014.
• “Covid-19 has made housework more visible, but it still isn’t valued,” by Kevin Sapere, The Washington Post, April 8, 2021.
• “Wages for Housework is 50. This is the change it has inspired,” by Leila Hawkins, Nadja.co, April 16, 2022.
• “‘They say it is love, we say it is unwaged work’ – 50 years of fighting to be paid for housework,” by Rosa Campbell, Gloria Media, December 19, 2022.
• “The ‘true value of women’s work,’” by Kristina García, Penn Today, July 26, 2023.
• Care Income Now

Amelia Jenks Bloomer was many things: writer and publisher, public speaker, temperance reformer, advocate for women’s rights and dress reform, and adoptive mother. She was not the inventor of the trousers for women that came to bear her name – bloomers – although she wore them and wrote about them for many years. Throughout her life, even as poor health often stood in her way, Amelia Bloomer took action, never waiting for someone else to do what was needed. I’m joined in this episode by writer Sara Catterall, author of Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-Fashion Icon.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Lily of the prairie,” composed and with lyrics by Kerry Mills, performed by Billy MMurray and the Haydn Quartet on July 7, 1907, in Camden, New Jersey; this recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is an illustration of Amelia Bloomer from Illustrated London News with the description: "Amelia Bloomer , Originator Of The New Dress. — From A Daguerreotype By T. W. Brown,” published August 27, 1851; the illustration is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Amelia Bloomer Didn’t Mean to Start a Fashion Revolution, But Her Name Became Synonymous With Trousers,” by Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine, May 24, 2018.
• “Amelia Bloomer – Publisher and Advocate for Woman’s Rights,” VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project.
• “Amelia Bloomer: Topics in Chronicling America,” Library of Congress.
• “Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894),” by Arlisha R. Norwood, NWHM Fellow, National Women’s History Museum, 2017.
• “Amelia Bloomer,” National Park Service.
• “Petition of Amelia Bloomer Regarding Suffrage in the West,” by Linda Simmons, National Archives.
• “Life and writings of Amelia Bloomer,” by D. C. Bloomer, United States: Arena Publishing Company, 1895. Via Project Guternberg.

My guest today is Dr. Martha S. Jones, the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, professor of history, and a professor at the SNF Agora Institute at the Johns Hopkins University and author of The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir. In this book, Prof. Jones researches her family’s past to understand how each generation encountered and negotiated the color line, beginning with her great-great-great-grandmother who survived enslavement and raised a free family.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode audio is “Family trouble blues,” composed by Olman J. Cobb, and performed in New York on May 5, 1923, with Lizzie Miles on vocals and Clarence Johnson on piano; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is Jennie Holley Jones and family, from the cover of The Trouble of Color.

After emancipation, formerly enslaved Black Americans knew that the key to economic freedom was land ownership, but as soon as they began to acquire land, local tax assessors began to overassess their land and exact steep penalties if they couldn’t pay the resulting inflated property taxes. For the past 150 years, all over the country, the same story has played out, with African Americans paying disproportionately higher property taxes, whether due to systemic inequities or corrupt local officials, while at the same time receiving dramatically fewer public services. And due to a Depression-Era law, aimed at limiting the tax bargaining powers of large property owners, Black Americans have been unable to seek redress against discriminatory property tax assessments in the US Supreme Court. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl, Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Virginia, and author of The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Baby won't you please come home blues,” written by Charles Warfield and performed by Bessie Smith on April 11, 1923, in New York; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a sign in Harlingen, Texas, photographed in 1939, by Lee Russell; available via the The New York Public Library on Unsplash; free to use under the Unsplash License.

Additional Sources:

• “How do state and local property taxes work?” The Tax Policy Briefing Book.
• “History of Property Taxes in the United States,” by Glenn W. Fisher, Economics History Association.
• “America Used to Have a Wealth Tax: The Forgotten History of the General Property Tax,” by Carl Davis and Eli Byerly-Duke, ITEP, November 2, 2023.
• “It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes,” by Andrew W. Kahrl, The New York Times, April 11, 2024.
• “Prop 13 and Inequality: How the 1978 Tax Reform Law Drives Economic and Racial Disparities” by Jonathan Vankin, California Local, November 29, 2022.
• “The Lock-in Effect of California’s Proposition 13,” By Les Picker, The NBER Digest, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2005.
• “Property tax burdens fall on nation’s lowest-income homeowners, study finds,” UChicago News, Mach 9, 2021.
• “The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation,” by Carlos Avenancio-León and Troup Howard, The Washington Center for Equitable Growth, June 10, 2020.

For Ericka Huggins, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which she attended at just 15 years old, was a turning point in her life, inspiring her toward activism. She later joined the Black Panther Party, and after being incarcerated as a political prisoner, served as Director of the acclaimed Oakland Community School and became both the first Black person and the first woman appointed to the Alameda County Board of Education. She continues her activism work today in the fields of restorative justice and social change. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Mary Frances Phillips, Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and author of Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Vinyl Funk by Alisia from Pixabay, free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Ericka Huggins at Occupy Oakland Protest on November 2, 2011,” by Clay@SU on Flickr, CC by 2.0.

Additional Sources:

• “Ericka Huggins”
• “Hggins, Ericka,” Archives at Yale.
• “Ericka Huggins (January 5, 1948),” National Archives.
• “The 1963 March on Washington,” NAACP.
• “How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement,” by Sarah Pruitt, History.com, Originally posted February 20, 2020, and updated July 27, 2023.
• “Black Panther Party,” National Archives.
• “The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change,” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
• “(1966) The Black Panther Party Ten-Point Program,” BlackPast.
• “Black Panthers’ Oakland Community School: A Model for Liberation,” by Shani Ealey, Staff Writer, Black Organizing Project, November 3, 2016.
• “Black Panthers ran a first-of-its-kind Oakland school. Now it’s a beacon for schools in California,” By Ida Mojadad, The San Francisco Standard, August 7, 2023.