Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson

Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson is produced by WDET, Detroit’s public radio and NPR station. This Detroit Today episode discussed the role of photography when reporting on the war in Ukraine. The episode aired on May 19, 2022. The first interview was with Salwan Georges, a Pulitzer-winning photojournalist who documented the unfolding war. Second interview was with Jen Schradie, former documentary filmmaker, professor and author of the book “The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives.” Schradie studies what she calls, the Digital Activism Gap, including the role photography plays in that.

Unfinished: Deep South

Voted one of the best podcasts of 2020 by The Atlantic and nominated for the prestigious Peabody. Unfinished: Deep South tells the American story of Black land loss. In 1954, a wealthy African-American farmer named Isadore Banks was lynched in Crittenden County, Arkansas. He owned more than 1,000 acres of land along the Arkansas Delta, all of which disappeared after his murder. His death not only shattered his family, but one of the largest communities of Black Americans looking for liberated life after enslavement. Focusing on an American history often untold—post-Reconstruction up until the Civil Rights movement—we’ll unpack America’s unfinished business and make the case for reparations by asking ‘Who Lynched Isadore Banks?’

Starting in 2018, I worked as a historical researcher for Market Road Films’s first podcast. Unfinished: Deep South aired June of 2020 with Stitcher/Midroll (now SiriusXM). I started out at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, combing through the Peonage Files of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1901-1945. Later, I researched Banks’s family lineage (based on the family lore of our sources) and tracked down a key newspaper article that corroborated one of the stories, from the mid-1800s. After that, I was asked on as a producer; continuing my work in historical research, while also pulling quotes from a number of interviews to place within the scripts. I did some reporting throughout my time on this project, also filing many public records requests. I also edited audio for episodes 1-5, and contributed to the promotional and social media plans for the show.

The Food Griot Chronicles for the Philadelphia Citizen

While at Market Road Films, we produced a series of short episodes about African-American food history in one of the country’s oldest cities, Philadelphia. The Food Griot is known as historian and public educator, Tonya Hopkins.