Inspirational black women
The History Hour10 Helmi 2024

Inspirational black women

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service telling stories about inspirational black women.

In 1973, the Battle of Versailles pit up-and-coming American designers using black models against the more traditional French. We hear from Bethann Hardison, one of those black models, about how the capital of couture, Paris, became the stage for this defining moment in the history of fashion.

Professor Adrienne Jones, a fashion expert at the Pratt Insitute in New York, explains the cultural significance of the event, and what changed in the world of fashion afterwards.

Plus, the story of the UK’s first luxury Afro-Caribbean hair salon, Splinters, which opened as recently as the 1980s. Charlotte Mensah, known as the ‘Queen of the ‘fro’, recalls what it was like to work there. Part of her story includes an account racial bullying.

Also, archive interviews tell the story of how Rosa Parks defied racist segregation laws in the United States. It contains outdated and offensive language.

We hear how a Nigerian lawyer took on the country’s Sharia courts to overturn a death sentence.

And the tragic story of Lucha Reyes, one of Peru’s most beloved singers.

Contributors: Bethann Hardison- a model who competed in the Battle of Versailles. Prof Adrienne Jones- from the Pratt Institute in New York. Hauwa Ibrahim- one of the first female lawyers from northern Nigeria. Polo Bances- saxophonist who played alongside Lucha Reyes.

(Photo: Bethann Hardison and Armina Warsuma arriving in France. Credit: Photo by Michel Maurou/Reginald Gray/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images)

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The outbreak of World War Two

The outbreak of World War Two

On September 1st 1939 German forces invaded Poland. Douglas Slocombe, a British cameraman, was there at the time and filmed the build-up to the war. Also the man who resisted the Sicilian Mafia in the 1990s plus the first all-female peacekeeping force, the defining trial of holocaust denial and why Apollo 11's astronauts were put in quarantine after their historic landing on the moon. (Image: German citizens in Gdansk (also known as Danzig) welcoming German troops during the invasion of Poland on September 3rd 1939 . Credit:EPA/National Digital Archive Poland.)

7 Syys 201952min

The Kindertransport children

The Kindertransport children

Around 10,000 children were sent by their parents to safety in the UK out of Nazi-dominated Europe in the run-up to the outbreak of WW2 in 1939. Many of the so-called Kindertransport children never saw their parents again. We hear from Dame Stephanie Shirley who arrived in London as a five-year-old girl. Also, how the legendary singer Nina Simone went to live in Liberia, plus a key breakthrough in criminal forensics, the lynching of a black teenager that galvanised America's civil rights movement, and the murder of Mexican young women in the border town of Ciudad Juarez.(Photo:Getty Images)

31 Elo 201950min

The return of the wolf

The return of the wolf

Why the wolf was brought back to the US in the 1990s and the history of "rewilding", plus the liberation of Paris 75 years on, the missing children from El Salvador's civil war, the life and death of Brazil's legendary president Vargas, and the man who wanted to be a cyborg.Photo:.A Yellowstone wolf watches biologists after being tranquilized and fitted with a radio collar during wolf collaring operations in Yellowstone National Park (William Campbell/Sygma via Getty Images)

24 Elo 201950min

The division of Kashmir

The division of Kashmir

The origins of the crisis in Kashmir, the warnings ignored about 9/11 and the arrest of the notorious terror suspect Carlos the Jackal. Plus the invention in a British back garden of the daily disposable contact lens and how Dr Seuss taught America to read.Photo: Indian troops arriving in Kashmir in October 1947 (Getty Images)

17 Elo 201950min

The mass exodus of Algeria's 'Pieds Noirs'

The mass exodus of Algeria's 'Pieds Noirs'

The French colonialists who returned to France after decades in Algeria, the Catholic welcome when the British army was first deployed to Northern Ireland, plus the US nuclear submarine that went under the north pole, Britain's last battle in China in WW2 and the introduction of Community Service to help relieve overcrowded prisons.(Photo: French repatriates leaving Algeria May 1962. (Photo by REPORTERS ASSOCIES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

10 Elo 201949min

The anti-nuclear protesters who won

The anti-nuclear protesters who won

The eight year protest campaign which stopped the construction of a nuclear reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf in Germany, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and from more than a decade later, the death of British weapons expert David Kelly, who got caught up in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Also, the Warsaw uprising of 1944 and from one of the most significant discoveries of Anglo-Saxon treasure in 1939.Picture: demonstrators fight against police during a protest at the Wackersdorf construction site (Istvan Bajzat/DPA/PA Images)

3 Elo 201951min

When Tunisia led on women's rights

When Tunisia led on women's rights

Liberation for Tunisia's women in the 1950s; gay and lesbian fake marriages in China; the Chappaquiddick incident in the US; the birth of Mamma Mia! the musical, and the discovery of the fossilised remains of humanity's oldest ancestor.Photo: courtesy of Saida El Gueyed

27 Heinä 201950min

Exploring space

Exploring space

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing in July 1969, five personal accounts of landmarks in space exploration. We hear from an Apollo flight controller about the moment Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, and from one of the astronauts who survived the Apollo 13 near disaster. Plus how Laika the dog became the first living creature in space, the pioneering woman cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, and Britain's attempt to put the Beagle 2 lander on Mars.PHOTO: Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in July 1969 (Getty Images)

20 Heinä 201950min

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