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History Becomes Her
Akilah Hughes on Constance Baker Motley and self-care for the extremely online
Season 1, Ep. 8
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Akilah Hughes is a writer, comedian, YouTuber, and podcaster. Hughes is the co-host of Crooked Media's What A Day podcast and one of the few black women hosting a daily news podcast. Podcasting has a representation problem. There are more podcasts than ever before, but women and people of colour are still sorely underrepresented as hosts, especially when it comes to daily news.
This week's episode is hosted by Jess Joho, a staff writer at Mashable based in Los Angeles. In this episode, Hughes discusses representation in podcasting, her book Obviously: Stories from My Timeline, and how she practices self-care as someone reporting on daily news. In the episode, Hughes shares her admiration for Constance Baker Motley, an African-American civil rights activist and and the first African American woman to become a federal judge. Motley was the assistant attorney to Thurgood Marshall arguing the case Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Motley was the first black woman to serve in the New York State Senate and the first woman to be Manhattan Borough President. Motley was a lead trial attorney for a number of significant civil rights cases, and represented Martin Luther King, Jr., the Freedom Riders, and the Birmingham Children Marchers. She was widely regarded as the leading courtroom strategist of the civil rights movement.
Important note: This episode was recorded in February 2020, during Black History Month in the U.S. when the Democratic Primaries were in full swing.
Please subscribe, rate, and review. Find us on Twitter and Instagram: @HBHPod. You can find Jess Joho on Twitter @jessjoho. You can find Akilah Hughes on Twitter @AkilahObviously.
Special thanks to Akilah Hughes and Jess Joho.
Credits:
Host: Jess Joho
Creator: Rachel Thompson
Producers: Maria Dermentzi and Nikolay Nikolov
Editor: Shannon Connellan
Music: Christianne Straker
Illustration: Vicky Leta
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