Welcome to the For The Record newsletter!

For the Record: A Black Oral History Archive is a collection of more than 100 firsthand stories from Black Americans across regions, generations, and identities. Our reporters and partners have spent months gathering recollections from Black people that paint a vivid picture of resistance, resilience, invention, and celebration. Those stories are now yours to explore. 

To help guide you through these oral histories, we’ve hand-picked 12 stories from this growing library that we think you should check out. Each week, right here in your inbox, you’ll get one of those recommendations from a Capital B journalist.

We’ll kick things off below with a recommendation from our co-founder and chief audience officer, Akoto Ofori-Atta. 

Nicole Crooks

Nicole Crooks (Adam Mahoney/Capital B)

I loved Adam Mahoney’s interview with Nicole Crooks, a 52-year-old writer and community worker based in Miami, who described having an “almost casual proximity to Black intellectual and political giants” when she was growing up.

She shared an anecdote about James Baldwin that I certainly hadn’t heard before, and now I can’t look at this iconic photo in the same way.

Check out her story, and I doubt you will see it the same way, either.

— Akoto Ofori-Atta, co-founder and chief audience officer, Capital B