Khalilah L. Liptrot
@khalilahliptrot.bsky.social
Unearthing buried stories. Mapping cultural fault lines. (Re)formed in newsrooms + archives + chancel rails.
Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus nine months before Rosa Parks.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Claudette Colvin was 15 when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.
Nine months later, a 42-year-old woman made headlines for doing the same thing.
Colvin had been studying Harriet Tub...
substack.com
February 18, 2026 at 2:08 PM
Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus nine months before Rosa Parks.
Charlotta Bass bought a newspaper for $50 and made the most powerful people in Los Angeles answer for what everyone knew but no one would say.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
The California Eagle published the home addresses of landlords who wouldn't rent to Black families.
Charlotta Bass bought the paper for $50.
She understood what a newspaper could be.
The police off...
substack.com
February 16, 2026 at 2:09 PM
Charlotta Bass bought a newspaper for $50 and made the most powerful people in Los Angeles answer for what everyone knew but no one would say.
Reposted by Khalilah L. Liptrot
Absolutely wonderful story. An amazing history representing a powerful generation of Black women who integrated white colleges. Their stories, like this one, still sear us.
She was 18. And she was alone. This is what they wouldn’t say.
With Honors
Two beds, two desks, two closets. Down the hall: laughter, girls beginning friendships. In 1965, she was eighteen. And alone. Decades later, I went searching for her.
open.substack.com
February 8, 2026 at 8:57 PM
Absolutely wonderful story. An amazing history representing a powerful generation of Black women who integrated white colleges. Their stories, like this one, still sear us.
“…to realize my social and academic responsibility in the community.” We signed it. We meant it. We live it.
Flim Flam
None of the photographs held our faces, so she said our names.
open.substack.com
February 15, 2026 at 2:21 PM
“…to realize my social and academic responsibility in the community.” We signed it. We meant it. We live it.
Ed Dwight was in line to fly to space before he ever heard the name Harriet Tubman.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Ed Dwight was in line to fly to space before he ever heard the name Harriet Tubman.
He was 42 years old when a former Tuskegee Airman, gave him books and told him to look for her in U.S. monuments.
...
substack.com
February 13, 2026 at 11:47 PM
Ed Dwight was in line to fly to space before he ever heard the name Harriet Tubman.
They wanted Leontyne Price in chains. She took the stage in velvet and jewels.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Leontyne Price's voice had filled every opera house in the world except one.
She'd sung in Europe's greatest houses. Vienna. La Scala. Covent Garden.
But the Metropolitan Opera wanted something spec...
substack.com
February 11, 2026 at 4:30 PM
They wanted Leontyne Price in chains. She took the stage in velvet and jewels.
What do you do when you lead an institution built on atrocity?
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Ruth Simmons became president of a university built on human trafficking.
The position itself was historic. A Black woman leading an institution founded by slaveholders.
She could have stopped there...
substack.com
February 9, 2026 at 12:41 PM
What do you do when you lead an institution built on atrocity?
She was 18. And she was alone. This is what they wouldn’t say.
With Honors
Two beds, two desks, two closets. Down the hall: laughter, girls beginning friendships. In 1965, she was eighteen. And alone. Decades later, I went searching for her.
open.substack.com
February 8, 2026 at 7:24 PM
She was 18. And she was alone. This is what they wouldn’t say.
The world told a Black girl she needed blue eyes to be beautiful. Toni Morrison said no.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Pecola Breedlove prayed for blue eyes.
The world had taught her that beauty was white, that value was white, that to be seen you had to hate who you were.
Toni Morrison said no.
Sula. Song of Solo...
substack.com
February 6, 2026 at 3:03 PM
The world told a Black girl she needed blue eyes to be beautiful. Toni Morrison said no.
Every civil rights victory you celebrate will disappear the moment it stops serving dominant interests.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Derrick Bell won hundreds of school desegregation cases as a civil rights lawyer.
And he recognized a pattern in U.S. civil rights history.
Brown v. Board promised integration. Twenty years later, s...
substack.com
February 4, 2026 at 1:22 PM
Every civil rights victory you celebrate will disappear the moment it stops serving dominant interests.
For 31 years, almost no one read Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism. Then Ferguson happened.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Cedric Robinson took a term from anti-apartheid scholars and traced it back centuries.
South African scholars had named apartheid “racial capitalism.” Robinson saw the pattern didn’t start there. It ...
substack.com
February 2, 2026 at 1:25 PM
For 31 years, almost no one read Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism. Then Ferguson happened.
$100 mixtapes bought back the block where Nipsey Hussle started.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Nipsey Hussle sold mixtapes from his trunk.
Crenshaw and Slauson. The corner where he grew up.
No label. No distribution. Just him, the music, and whoever would listen. He built a fanbase that way...
substack.com
January 30, 2026 at 1:41 PM
$100 mixtapes bought back the block where Nipsey Hussle started.
Sylvia Robinson put hip hop on wax.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Sylvia Robinson heard it at Harlem World.
Summer 1979.
Hip-hop lived in block parties and park jams. It had never been put on wax.
Robinson had been in music since she was 14, knew how to make mo...
substack.com
January 28, 2026 at 1:13 PM
Sylvia Robinson put hip hop on wax.
Richmond segregated its streetcars in 1904. Maggie Lena Walker bankrupted them in two months.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Maggie Lena Walker opened St. Luke Penny Savings Bank on November 2, 1903.
Black depositors. Black tellers. Black loans for Black homes and businesses.
First day: $8,000 in deposits.
Not just a ban...
substack.com
January 26, 2026 at 1:32 PM
Richmond segregated its streetcars in 1904. Maggie Lena Walker bankrupted them in two months.
Benjamin Banneker charted where the U.S. Capital would stand. Enslaved Black people built it.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Benjamin Banneker taught himself astronomy from a borrowed book.
He was born free in Maryland in 1731. A rarity.
He built a wooden clock at 22 that kept perfect time for 40 years.
He studied the...
substack.com
January 23, 2026 at 1:29 PM
Benjamin Banneker charted where the U.S. Capital would stand. Enslaved Black people built it.
Alma D. Green napped safe passage for Black travelers.
Nobody knew her name for 23 years.
Nobody knew her name for 23 years.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Alma D. Green knew the roads.
She traveled them as a dressmaker between New Jersey and Virginia in the early 1900s.
A Black woman. In the Jim Crow South.
She knew which hotels would take you. Wh...
substack.com
January 21, 2026 at 1:30 PM
Alma D. Green napped safe passage for Black travelers.
Nobody knew her name for 23 years.
Nobody knew her name for 23 years.
At 23, he became Rosa Parks’ lawyer.
At 95, he’s suing to remove Confederate monuments.
At 95, he’s suing to remove Confederate monuments.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
There were only two Black lawyers in Montgomery.
Fred Gray was one of them.
Black students couldn’t attend the segregated professional schools in Alabama. So, Alabama paid them to study out of sta...
substack.com
January 19, 2026 at 1:26 PM
At 23, he became Rosa Parks’ lawyer.
At 95, he’s suing to remove Confederate monuments.
At 95, he’s suing to remove Confederate monuments.
Stevie Wonder has been preaching Black liberation theology for 60 years.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
"Clap your hands just a little bit louder. Clap your hands just a little bit louder."
1962. A 12-year-old blind boy commanded a Regal Theater audience in Chicago.
The recording hit #1 and Stevie Wo...
substack.com
January 16, 2026 at 1:32 PM
Stevie Wonder has been preaching Black liberation theology for 60 years.
“Good morning, is everybody happy?”
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
"Good morning, is everybody happy?"
Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux opened every broadcast the same way.
Millions listening.
"Happy am I with my Redeemer."
H-A-P-P-Y. A-M. I.
1938. Griffith Stadi...
substack.com
January 14, 2026 at 1:25 PM
“Good morning, is everybody happy?”
Before W. James Abbington left for the University of Michigan, Daddy King gave him advice.
Embraced scholarship, but never forget the roots of Black worship.
Embraced scholarship, but never forget the roots of Black worship.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Before W. James Abbington left for the University of Michigan, Daddy King gave him advice.
Embrace scholarship, but never forget the roots of Black worship.
At Michigan, he studied the Classics.
Bu...
substack.com
January 12, 2026 at 1:08 PM
Before W. James Abbington left for the University of Michigan, Daddy King gave him advice.
Embraced scholarship, but never forget the roots of Black worship.
Embraced scholarship, but never forget the roots of Black worship.
“I want tellee somebody who I see.” Zora Neale Hurston transcribed every word.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Zora Neale Hurston sat on Cudjo Lewis's porch in Mobile, Alabama. She brought peaches, watermelon, ham.
He was 86.
He told her his story. "I want tellee somebody who I is."
His English was West Af...
substack.com
January 9, 2026 at 1:17 PM
“I want tellee somebody who I see.” Zora Neale Hurston transcribed every word.
What if Blackdom, Seneca Village, Greenwood, Rosewood survived? What if they protected each other across time?
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Camae Ayewa listened to four hours of audio for months.
Sandra Bland's dashcam recording.
She heard every sound as its own event.
Car doors. Wind through windows. Pauses between words. Sandra's ...
substack.com
January 7, 2026 at 3:22 PM
What if Blackdom, Seneca Village, Greenwood, Rosewood survived? What if they protected each other across time?
The FBI opened a file on her. She opened her living room.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
Margaret T.G. Burroughs stood in front of her DuSable High School students. She taught them their faces were art.
At home, she carved linocuts. Black faces. Black hands. Black life.
She collected....
substack.com
January 5, 2026 at 1:26 PM
The FBI opened a file on her. She opened her living room.
He spent 30 years collecting Black history. Sold it for $10,000. Six years later, he returned as its curator. Then never left.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
New York Public Library. 135th Street Branch.
One hundred four crates arrived in 1926.
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg had spent 30 years collecting.
His mission: preserve the historical records of the ra...
substack.com
January 2, 2026 at 1:49 PM
He spent 30 years collecting Black history. Sold it for $10,000. Six years later, he returned as its curator. Then never left.
His Harvard classmates took six-figure jobs. Bryan Stevenson chose $14,000 in Montgomery.
Khalilah L. Liptrot (@khalilahliptrot)
His Harvard classmates took six-figure jobs. Bryan Stevenson opted for $14,000 a year in Montgomery, Alabama.
1985. He graduated Harvard Law School, packed his 1975 Honda Civic, and moved.
Montgomer...
substack.com
December 31, 2025 at 1:46 PM
His Harvard classmates took six-figure jobs. Bryan Stevenson chose $14,000 in Montgomery.