In Episode 1, the Sistas examine the ones who have portrayed the greatest detective of them all: Sherlock Holmes.
From Victorian England to New York City, crimes are solved, criminals are nabbed, with Watson riding shot gun it is all elementary. The Sistas try to determine who is the greatest Holmes of all.
Check out the various interpretations of the world-famous detective Sherlock Holmes.
Listen Sherlocked
Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1858-1964) was a writer, teacher, and activist who championed education for African Americans and women.
Born into bondage in 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina, Anna Haywood married George A.G. Cooper, a teacher of theology at Saint Augustine’s, in 1877. When her husband died two years later, Cooper decided to pursue a college degree. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio on a scholarship, earning a BA in 1884 and a masters degree in mathematics in 1887. After graduation, Cooper worked at Wilberforce University and Saint Augustine’s before moving to Washington, D.C. to teach at Washington Colored High School. During her years as a teacher and principal at M Street High School, Cooper also completed her first book, titled A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South, published in 1892, and delivered many speeches calling for civil rights and women’s rights.
On February 27, 1964, Cooper died in Washington, DC at the age of 105.
This is one of the episodes that is very popular. We knew we would have to talk about it as soon as we saw the show.
Sometimes crime hits close to home. The True Crime genre explores the crimes that happen in our neighborhoods, cities and families. This genre reminds us that the world we live in can sometimes be scary and dangerous. The Sistas explore these stories.
Listen True Crime
This month will feature quotes from individuals who were born free.
Egbert “Bert” Austin Williams was one of the greatest entertainers in America’s history. Born in the Bahamas on November 12, 1874, he came to the United States permanently in 1885. Williams met George Walker in San Francisco in 1893 and the two formed what became the most successful comedy team of their time. When Walker retired in 1908 due to illness, Williams starred in Mr. Load of Koal (1909)–the last black musical on Broadway for more than ten years. Unable to continue producing shows without Walker, Williams signed on with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1910–the only black performer in this famous review. He explained this controversial move saying, “… colored show business is at a low ebb just now … it was far better to have joined a large white show than to have starred in a colored show, considering conditions.” Williams stayed with the Follies through 1919, after which he appeared with Eddie Cantor in Broadway Brevities (1920) and Under the Bamboo Tree (1921-22). While on tour with the latter show, his failing health caught up with him and he contracted pneumonia. Williams died in New York City on March 4, 1922.
https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200038860/
It is one of our favorite episodes and it might inspire you to watch this series.
There is action and adventure which is what both Sistas really like, but something was added to this limited series that intrigue the pair and it wasn’t just the good looking brother. Listen to this week’s episode to see what it is.
Listen Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Harriet Jacobs was an African-American writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an “American classic”. Born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, in Feb of 1811 she was sexually harassed by her enslaver. She was the first woman to write a fugitive slave narrative.
https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/bio.html
Remember that television series from the 1970s that was a remade for the 2000s? The Sistas talk about remakes in this episode where they look at some good ones and some bad ones. Did Hawaii Five O really need to tell that story again?
Listen. https:/Remakes: Retelling Old Stories
Solomon Northup (born July 10, c. 1807 or 1808) was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. A farmer and a professional violinist, Northup had been a landowner in Washington County, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician’s job and went to Washington, D.C. (where slavery was legal); there he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold as a slave. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained a slave until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Northup
UPP Creative Media 