In the first episode of Black Photojournalism, artist Hank Willis Thomas talks about growing up in a household that hosted numerous Black photojournalists and how that influenced his practice. Host Mark Whitaker and Charlene Foggie-Barnett, community archivist for the Charles “Teenie” Harris archive, discuss their personal connections to Pittsburgh and the rich Black history of the city.

Dr. Frances “Toni” Murphy Draper and artist Savannah Wood talk about the history of Baltimore’s AFRO American Newspaper and their family’s ownership of the paper that dates back five generations to 1892.

In this episode, photographer Clinton Wright talks about what it was like to move to and photograph Las Vegas in the 1960s and 70s, a time when many casinos were still segregated. Aaron Mayes and Claytee White, who work with Wright’s archive at the UNLV Libraries Special Collection help situate these photographs within the historical context of Civil Rights activism in Las Vegas.

There are two different stories this episode of Black Photojournalism: one rooted in Southern California, where Bruce Talamon got his start photographing the legends of R&B and soul; the other up north, in and around Oakland, where filmmaker Stanley Nelson documented the Black Panthers becoming their own image-makers which they used to build a movement.

This episode covers a broad swath of the American South ranging from the work of Ernest Withers in Memphis, Tennessee as discussed by his daughter Rosalind Withers, to Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas where Bob Ray Sanders and Norma Adams Wade talk about their extensive experiences working in the newspaper business.