Our ancestors were just people — Nichole Hill

Nichole Hill is the award-winning showrunner and creator of Our Ancestors Were Messy, a 2024 Official Tribeca Audio Selection. Through her show, Nichole is pulling the rug out from under the pedestal we tend to put figures in Black history on. To her, people like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston were huge contributors to Black culture. But...they were also just people. Sometimes messy people. In this episode we chat with Nichole about the great responsibility that comes with telling our ancestors’ stories truthfully — flaws and all.

Homegoings is a production of Vermont Public. Follow the show here.

This episode was hosted and reported by executive producer, Myra Flynn and mixed by Burgess Brown. Our video director is Mike Dunn and Aaron Edwards is our story editor. Myra composed the theme music with other music by Blue Dot Sessions. Kyle Ambusk is the graphic artist behind this episode’s Homegoings portrait.

Thank you for listening. You can see this episode on our YouTube channel.

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