HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-12-08T12:11:11.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The US 'voodoo' scare: why 19th-century racists spread fake news about Haiti
items: "There's little understanding of the shared history of Britain and the subcontinent" | South Asian Heritage Month
items: Suing for equality: how Sarah Mae Flemming began the legal fight against segregation
items: Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Samba schools used the carnival to foreground overlooked histories"
items: Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years
items: My history hero: Pauline Black chooses Billie Holiday (1915–59)
items: "These women transformed his understanding of the world": making Malcolm X
items: Robert Wedderburn: the ‘notorious firebrand’ who campaigned against slavery
items: A “desperate leap for liberty”: how Ellen and William Craft made a daring escape from slavery
items: The profits of slavery: the dire impact of empire on Britain's countryside

The US 'voodoo' scare: why 19th-century racists spread fake news about Haiti
type: item
date: 2025-12-08T09:00:17.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Slavery
description: From sexual orgies to Satan incarnated as a snake, lurid depictions of ‘voodoo’ in North America long titillated and shocked readers. As David G Cox explains, they were also wielded as justifications for racist oppression during the social and political upheavals of the 19th-century US
encoded: On 2 January 1893, the black American abolitionist and reformer Frederick Douglass delivered a lecture on Haiti to an audience in Chicago. It was widely alleged, he reflected, that the Caribbean republic was riddled with “voodooism, fetishism, serpent worship and cannibalism”, and that “little children are fatted for slaughter and offered as sacrifices to their voodoo deities”. Such claims, Douglass declared, were false. He told his listeners that, while serving as US minister (effectively, ambassador) to Haiti between 1889 and 1891, he found no evidence of ritual sacrifice, despite diligent investigation. By the time Douglass spoke in Chicago, the idea of Haitian ‘voodoo’ as a murderous cult was lodged in the American public consciousness. As he noted, the features of this myth would have been familiar to many. According to scores of white writers at the turn of the 20th century, ‘voodoo’ was an imported African religion devoted to the worship of Satan incarnated as a snake. ‘Voodoo’ ceremonies, it was claimed, consisted of frenzied dances, sexual orgies and the ritual sacrifice of animals or humans followed by the consumption of their bodies or blood. The priests and priestesses of this imaginary faith were said to be the real rulers of Haiti, holding all its citizens – from presidents to peasants – in the grip of terror. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-556636225webready-f31fffd-e1765183494712.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting of a black man dressed in a suit with a small bow tie. He has short hair and a thick moustache" title="Ebenezer Bassett denounced claims that the black-led Caribbean nation was a hotbed of ‘voodoo’ cannibalism and human sacrifice (Image by Getty Images)" /> In 1901, claims about Haitian ‘voodoo’ coalesced in a widely reprinted newspaper report on the “demoniacal orgies” of this purported “devil’s cult”. Supposedly reproducing the findings of the famous American geologist …

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"There's little understanding of the shared history of Britain and the subcontinent" | South Asian Heritage Month
type: item
date: 2025-08-04T08:00:12.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: As Britain celebrates South Asian Heritage Month, Shalina Patel, Sumita Mukherjee and Shrabani Basu talk to Matt Elton about how histories of the subcontinent can be better shared and explored
encoded: Matt Elton: What do you see as the value of South Asian Heritage Month? And do you think this kind of specific history month is generally a good thing? Shalina Patel: Black History Month was first marked in the UK in 1987, at a time when there was a huge absence of understanding about black history. Fast forward 30-plus years, and there are groups now advocating for black history 365 days a year. They feel that it shouldn’t be relegated to a specific month, but should be integrated [into conversations] all year. So if we think about the journey, I’d say that South Asian Heritage Month [SAHM, first held in 2020] is really important as a starting point, because there is currently an absence of understanding of the diversity within South Asian culture, communities and history. True, there’s a risk that this is the only time of year when people will talk about this topic, but we’re starting from a place where so few conversations are taking place on a public scale. So marking SAHM is really important now – and I hope that we will get to a point where we won’t need it anymore, because [South Asian stories] will be really integrated into people’s understanding. Sumita Mukherjee: I agree that it’s really important to increase the diversity of history that is being told. SAHM gives us the opportunity to have this conversation – it encourages the media and other forums to showcase stories and histories around South Asia. I would say that there’s an issue, though, with the timing as it stands, because most schools and universities are closed in late July and August, and lots of people are on holiday. Shrabani Basu: I think the important thing is to make it inclusive – it shouldn’t just be South Asians eating curries and watching dances. The point is to make it a national festival that everybody looks forward to. It’s the holiday season, so go for that – make it something that excites people. The danger with all these things is that they lose momentum. To keep it fresh and pop…

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Suing for equality: how Sarah Mae Flemming began the legal fight against segregation
type: item
date: 2025-07-08T08:00:22.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Amazing lives
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical events
description: The year before the arrest of Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, another black American woman started a legal fight against segregation on public transport. Clive Webb and Tom Adam Davies highlight her role in the civil rights battle
encoded: On 2 November 2005, thousands of mourners crowded into the Greater Grace Temple in Detroit to attend the funeral of black American civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Former US president Bill Clinton led the tributes before a congregation that held hands and sang the protest anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’. The story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama is familiar yet sometimes misunderstood. Her arrest for refusing to surrender a bus seat in December 1955 followed not the spontaneous action of an apolitical seamstress but a calculated decision by a lifelong activist who, along with other members of the black community, had put increasing pressure on white city leaders to end the daily indignities of segregated bus journeys. Her detention may have been the catalyst for the desegregation of public transport in the South, but other black women before her had also braved similar hurt, humiliation and intimidation. Among them was a woman called Sarah Mae Flemming. In June 1954, Flemming was involved in an incident that is far less celebrated than the Montgomery bus boycott. Yet it was an incident that truly laid the foundation for the eventual overturning of Jim Crow laws as applied to public transport. Flemming was a child of the Great Depression, one of seven children raised by a farming couple whose own parents had been enslaved. Born on 28 June 1933, she grew up alongside her siblings in a busy household near Eastover, South Carolina, a small community some 20 miles south-east of the state capital, Columbia. After graduating from high school, Flemming worked briefly for a relative in Ohio before returning to South Carolina to help support her family, taking a position as a maid for white residents in one of Columbia’s affluent suburbs. Read more | Emmett Till: the murder that reshaped the American civil rights movement The day that changed her life, 22 June 1954, started much as any other: she boarded a bus to work. At first there was standing room only, un…

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Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Samba schools used the carnival to foreground overlooked histories"
type: item
date: 2025-06-26T08:00:34.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Slavery
description: Kavita Puri on the important role of carnivals in remembering neglected histories
encoded: I was recently in Rio de Janeiro, in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, admiring some of the brightly coloured floats that had featured in this year’s world-famous carnival. Each spring, just before the start of Lent, hundreds of thousands of people attend the parades in the city’s Sambadrome stadium and enjoy watching the floats. Like pieces of art many metres high, they are designed and intricately handmade in Rio’s numerous escolas de samba (samba schools), each strongly identified with a local neighbourhood. The schools are organised into leagues for the carnival, during which they compete for the prestigious design award. Pre-Lenten festivities in Brazil began in the early 18th century, during the Portuguese colonial era. The Catholic influence is evident in the name of the event, which is believed to derive from the Latin carnem vale (farewell to meat) or carnem levare (remove meat), referring to the 40-day period of abstinence leading up to Easter. It’s said that the earliest form of the festivities in Brazil evolved from the pre-Lenten Entrudo, celebrated by immigrants from other Portuguese colonies on the Azores, Madeira and Cabo Verde. During that festival, people soaked each other with buckets of water and hurled mud and food, wreaking cheery mayhem that often degenerated into street brawls. Read more | Brazil: a society shaped by slavery In the 19th century, more organised parades attracted elite participants: even the Portuguese emperor joined in the celebrations, together with aristocrats wearing masks and extravagant costumes. Carnival balls were arranged, with music from Europe such as polkas and waltzes becoming popular. By the middle of that century, street parades with horse-drawn floats and military bands had become the focal points. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that samba – the music and dance style most strongly associated with carnival today – was developed by Afro-Brazilians whose ancestors had been transported to South Ameri…

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Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years
type: item
date: 2025-06-18T08:00:37.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: To celebrate a quarter-century of BBC History Magazine, we asked 25 expert contributors to nominate the most important historical discoveries and revelations since the publication launched in 2000
encoded: 1. Women played major roles in the Viking Age Just 25 years ago, there seemed to be little new to say about the Vikings – and that was particularly the case for Viking women. The centuries-old consensus was that Viking wives and daughters stayed at home, passively watching as the Viking Age unfolded around them. New technologies have forced a rethink, though, completely revolutionising what we know about Viking women. The first significant discovery came from a systematic survey of a nationwide database of metal-detected female dress jewellery. This demonstrated for the first time that Scandinavian women migrated to England in substantial numbers. Next, isotope analysis of teeth from the graves of Viking women showed that they had formed a key part of the migration process elsewhere, too, moving across the Viking world alongside their families. The most dramatic and most debated discovery, however, came through analysis of ancient DNA. In Birka, Sweden, an individual buried in a high-status warrior grave turned out to be biologically female. This led to a worldwide discussion of the roles of Viking women: we now agree that, though many certainly did stay at home, some played active roles in trade, craft and manufacturing processes, and even held military positions. Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, author and TV presenter. Her books include The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons (William Collins, 2023) 2. Britain has been culturally diverse for far longer than most believed The murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020 signalled a turning point in the way the histories of people of African descent were taught and perceived across Europe. From that moment, the British press and institutions felt that they had to engage better with narratives about minority ethnic communities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1292414316-CMYK-6ff23f7.jpg" width="1451" height="967" alt="…

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My history hero: Pauline Black chooses Billie Holiday (1915–59)
type: item
date: 2025-06-18T07:30:36.000Z
creator: York Membery
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: History hero
description: Singer, actor, author and filmmaker Pauline Black chooses Billie Holiday as a history hero
encoded: In profile Billie Holiday, born into poverty in Philadelphia as Eleanora Fagan, was an American jazz and swing singer. In 1939, she recorded the famous protest song ‘Strange Fruit’, lamenting black lynchings. In 1999, Time magazine named the song – also performed by luminaries ranging from Nina Simone to Jeff Buckley – as ‘Best Song of the Century’. After becoming dependent on drugs and alcohol, her health deteriorated. She died from pulmonary oedema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver aged just 44. When did you first hear about Holiday? I was studying to be a radiographer in my twenties when a fellow student mentioned Billie. I bought a Billie Holiday record that same day, and I’ve been a fan ever since. What kind of woman was she? Some people see her as a victim, hounded by the FBI over her drug use; others prefer to see her as a political activist who sang one of the first songs about a lynching. You have to view her drug and alcohol use in the context of her turbulent childhood. Her mother was just a teenager when she gave birth to Billie, who was raped as a child, sent to a Catholic reform school for girls and subsequently became a sex worker. What made her a hero? Despite her hellish childhood, she had huge strength of character, and went on to achieve great success and critical acclaim. Her voice is a bit Marmite: you either like it or you don’t. I loved it from the start – it pushed all my buttons – and I wasn’t the only one who was smitten. Frank Sinatra used to go to listen to her sing – and his whole phrasing, which lagged behind the beat, owed a great debt to her melancholic, jazzy vocal style. What was her finest hour? Performing ‘Strange Fruit’ – a riposte to racist America that would ring down the years – for the first time at Café Society, New York City’s first integrated nightclub, in 1939. She ended her set with that song and, when she’d finished and everybody began clapping, she just walked off stage. There was no coming back for an…

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"These women transformed his understanding of the world": making Malcolm X
type: item
date: 2025-06-10T08:00:15.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
description: Malcolm X became one of the most influential leaders in the US civil rights movement – thanks largely, explains Ashley D Farmer, to the women who shaped his life and ideas
encoded: On a balmy spring evening in Omaha, Nebraska, Louise Little answered a knock at the door. She must have been terrified when she opened it and saw several knights of the Ku Klux Klan on horseback, demanding that she produce her husband at once. Louise knew she was in trouble. She was all alone save her three children – Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert – and pregnant with her fourth child, Malcolm. But as the Klansmen brandished their guns, Louise stood her ground. She refused to let them see fear in her eyes or tell them her husband’s whereabouts. In the end, the men left with a threat on their lips as they rode off into the night. Such moments were par for the course for Louise Little, the first of many black women who taught, mentored and shaped the man now known as Malcolm X. Malcolm was born 100 years ago – on 19 May 1925, in Omaha. He was Grenadian-born Louise and Georgia-born Earl Little’s fourth child together. It is easy to see why Earl was smitten with Malcolm’s mother: Louise had travelled extensively, she spoke multiple languages and she was politically engaged. Malcolm’s parents met in Montreal, Canada at a gathering of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). A black nationalist from Jamaica, Garvey captured the black masses with his calls for race pride, and the right for black people all over the world to control their communities and determine their futures. The pair married in 1919, relocated briefly to Philadelphia and then moved to Omaha. By the time Malcolm was born, the Littles were well-known nationalist organisers in the area. Earl was the president of the local chapter of the UNIA, while Louise served as its secretary, managing memberships and writing for the UNIA’s newspaper, The Negro World. Childhood tragedies The couple worked hard to survive during Jim Crow – the state-sponsored racial caste system that deployed disenfranchisement, racial violence and segregation laws to make black people second-class citizens in almost…

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Robert Wedderburn: the ‘notorious firebrand’ who campaigned against slavery
type: item
date: 2025-04-17T08:00:46.000Z
creator: Ryan Hanley
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Amazing lives
subject: Slavery
description: While most British radicals fought for the rights of the exploited white working class, one man saw such rights as entwined with those of enslaved black workers. Ryan Hanley tells the story of the ‘notorious firebrand’ who campaigned against slavery
encoded: One October evening in 1809, Robert Wedderburn was walking through London, one child asleep in his arms and his daughter beside him, when he saw a gang of about 20 drunks encircling a young man near his home on Peter Street, St Giles. Things were getting hairy; it was clear the man was in danger. Wedderburn tried to pull him away from the gang peacefully, but it was no good. If he wanted to help, he’d have to get his hands dirty. He handed the sleeping child to his daughter, took off his coat and “said he would fight one or two of them at a time”. Alas, they all set upon him at once and beat him with thick walking sticks. He might have died then and there outside his house, in front of his children, if a soldier had not happened by. But that was Wedderburn: he never could walk away from a fight – all the more so when the odds were stacked against him. When the gang members were rounded up and brought before the magistrates, Wedderburn was the chief witness for the prosecution. A journalist for The Star, hanging around the courts looking for a story, noted that “the witness having betrayed much violence of temper, during his cross-examination, was reprimanded by the court”. That, too, was typical of the man who became a leader in London’s working-class radical underworld. Read more | Are black histories still being overlooked? It is easy to see why Wedderburn had a problem with authority. Born in Jamaica in the early 1760s, he gained his most important life lessons from the rebellious black women in his life, notably his mother, Rosanna, and grandmother, Amy. His mother had been a ladies’ maid until his father, the Scottish planter James Wedderburn, had purchased her, as Robert later put it, “for purposes of lust”. James abused his legal status as the ‘owner’ of this beautiful and accomplished woman to try to compel her into a consensual relationship. She did bear at least two of his children but loathed her captor, and was not shy about showing it. Rosanna made Jame…

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A “desperate leap for liberty”: how Ellen and William Craft made a daring escape from slavery
type: item
date: 2025-03-29T09:00:58.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Slavery
description: Born into slavery in the 19th century, Ellen and William Craft made a daring bid for freedom when they disguised themselves as a white man and his manservant and travelled 1,000 miles across America. Historian Ilyon Woo shares the extraordinary story of the husband and wife team with HistoryExtra podcast editor Ellie Cawthorne
encoded: On 21 December 1848, a young white-passing man going by the name ‘Mr Johnson’ boarded a train in Macon, Georgia, assisted by his enslaved manservant. With his slight frame, eyes shaded by green-tinged spectacles, and arm in a sling, this young man cut an unusual figure. But what no one else in the carriage knew was that Mr Johnson and his servant had a secret. They were not, in fact, master and slave, but wife and husband – Ellen and William Craft. In a bid to flee enslavement, the Crafts had donned disguises and were embarking on an epic 1,000-mile journey across America. It was, William later recalled, a “desperate leap for liberty”. Listen on the podcast: A audacious escape from slavery The Crafts’ story began in Macon, Georgia, where both had been enslaved since birth. Ellen’s first enslaver had been her own biological father, and by 1848, she was ‘owned’ by the husband of her half-sister, forced to work as a maid and seamstress. Meanwhile, William had struck an agreement with his enslaver to hire himself out as a skilled cabinetmaker. “Disappointingly, there’s no record of how the couple first met, but we do know that they thought about the idea of escape before they were even married,” says historian Ilyon Woo, who in 2024 appeared on the HistoryExtra podcast to discuss the Crafts’ extraordinary journey, which she reconstructed in her book Master Slave Husband Wife. Having seen loved ones torn apart by slavery, Ellen was initially hesitant to start a family of their own. “She wanted to wait to get married and have children until they were free,” says Woo. “Ultimately their love prevailed, and they decided to marry first, run later. But over the two years of their marriage, they were constantly thinking about how to get out.” Read more | The children who fought for the abolition of slavery The decision to run was a serious one; William and Ellen would have been all too aware of what might await them should their escape attempt fail – public punishment, torture,…

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The profits of slavery: the dire impact of empire on Britain's countryside
type: item
date: 2025-03-21T08:30:02.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Slavery
description: We know that enslaved Africans and their descendants suffered in the distant colonies of empire. But, as Corinne Fowler explains, the colonial system also led to significant changes for the countryside and its people of the ‘motherland’
encoded: For an encounter with one of the most eye-opening legacies of Britain’s colonial projects, take a drive along the A31 in southern Dorset. On the stretch between the delightfully named villages of Winterborne Zelston and Sturminster Marshall, the road kinks nearly 90 degrees; lining the verge here you’ll notice a wall – not hugely tall, but impressively long. Reputedly stretching for 3 miles and comprising nearly 2 million bricks, it was almost certainly built with profits from slavery. This is the so-called ‘great wall of Dorset’ – one of England’s longest, built around 1841 to encircle the vast Dorset estate of Charborough Park. It belongs to the Drax family, an old propertied clan who owned tobacco and sugar plantations in Barbados – and who massively increased their wealth by boosting profits through the use of slave labour. Read more | Slavery's painful legacy: the British empire's role in the trade of enslaved people It is easy to forget that colonial governors, slave-owners and East India Company employees and their heirs commonly became rural magistrates, customs officials, industrialists and politicians in Britain. The newly acquired land and social networks of these men allowed them to hold sway over other Britons in countryside regions. So it’s important to understand that, when it comes to exploring rural history, it’s not enough to ask where the money came from to buy country houses or fund village schools. What also matters is how these figures and their descendants exercised their power, wealth and influence in such areas. Back in 2020, I undertook an audit of published academic research about National Trust properties and their colonial links. So I already knew that country estates such as Basildon Park in Berkshire and Harewood House in Yorkshire were built and landscaped with colonial profits, and that Speke Hall near Liverpool was bought and restored with money from Jamaican slavery. I’d found, too, other architectural stories of places not managed…

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