Black Jesus
On Easter Sunday 1967 the Reverend Albert Cleage re-named his church in Detroit the Shrine of the Black Madonna. He preached that if man was made in God's image there was little chance that Jesus was white as most of the world's population is non-white. Plus, how British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wowed the Soviet Union with a live TV interview in 1987; how the death of singer Karen Carpenter raised the profile of the anorexia eating disorder; and the story of two Englishmen who were kidnapped on an orchid-hunt in Colombia.Photo: Black Madonna and Child (Courtesy of BLAC Detroit)
3 Apr 202149min
The History Hour
South Africa fights for cheaper drugs during the AIDS epidemic, the man born into slavery in Mauritania, trying to end the troubles in Northern Ireland, Banksy’s first street art and a sex therapy legend. With Max Pearson
27 Mars 202149min
The History Hour
The hunt to find the Jamaican drug lord wanted for extradition to the United States, the six men trapped in a simulated space ship for a year and a half, the mother of the Swedish welfare state, the New York drag scene of the 1990s and a classic cold war chess match which was much more than just a game. With Max Pearson(Jamaican police on patrol after a frenzy of gang and drug violence in Kingston, May 24 2010. Credit: Anthony Foster/Getty Images)
20 Mars 202149min
The women of Egypt's Arab Spring
The women of Egypt's Arab Spring; the underground abortion network in 1960s America; Greece's champion of the Parthenon Marbles, Melina Mercouri; China’s most powerful 19th-century ruler, and the doctor who was India’s 1966 Miss World.Photo: Hend Nafea protesting in Tahrir Square in January 2011. (Copyright Hend Nafea)
13 Mars 202149min
The Iron Curtain
Churchill's Iron Curtain speech about the Cold War, the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa which radicalised many anti-apartheid movements and we hear from a man whose relatives were killed when police bombed the home of African-American radicals in the US. Plus how Nauru became a Pacific island limbo for asylum seekers and the first man to dive to the deepest point on the planet - the bottom of the Mariana Trench. We'll also hear from a BBC science correspondent about why we know more about space than the deepest depths of the ocean. Photo: Winston Churchill at the podium delivering his "Iron Curtain" speech, at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri, 5th March 1946 (PA)
6 Mars 202149min
The fall of Kwame Nkrumah
An eyewitness account of the overthrow of Ghana's famous independence leader. And we examine Nkrumah's legacy with Prof. Gareth Austin from Cambridge University. Plus the story of a heroic African WW2 airman, the scientists who alerted the world to the threat of acid rain, a Nobel Peace Prize winner on the 1990s campaign to ban landmines and an inside account of Ireland's financial crisis. Photo: Kwame Nkrumah c 1955 (Getty Images)
27 Feb 202151min
Black History: The Black Panthers
As part of our Black History coverage we look back at the Black Panthers and ask Professor Clayborne Carson of Stanford University "How radical was the US black rights group?" Also, we bring you an archive interview with Mary Wilson of the Supremes, we delve into the question of compensation after the abolition of slavery - and no, not compensation for the people who had been enslaved, but for the former slave owners. Also, how one descendent of slaves, James Dawkins, discovered his ancestors' connection with the British writer Richard Dawkins. And, looking back at the story of Henrietta Lacks the African-American whose cells revolutionised medical science.Photo: Schoolchildren at a Black Panthers breakfast club. Credit: Shutterstock
20 Feb 202150min
US 'smart bombs' hit an Iraqi air raid shelter
More than 400 civilians were killed when two US precision bombs hit the Amiriya air raid shelter in western Baghdad on the morning of 13 February 1991. The Americans claimed that the building had served as a command and control centre for Saddam Hussein's forces. It was the largest single case of civilian casualities that ocurred during Operation Desert Storm. Also in this week's programme, a drug scandal from the 1970s which blighted the lives of generations, rare archive of the celebrated British artist, Francis Bacon, the 1980s New York Street News newspaper set up to help the homeless and we hear from a nurse from West Africa who devoted her life to the British health service. Photo: Inside the Amiriya air-raid shelter following the US bombing (Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)
13 Feb 202150min
