The SCHOOL SAGAS narrative podcast traces racial and class discord at the schoolhouse—where we cheer and learn together, where the gap between textbook “equality” and real world implementation is on display. 

SCHOOL SAGAS is supported in part by an African American Civil Rights grant from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. 

Additional support provided by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. 

SAGAS partners with Louisiana State University Shreveport, Southern University Shreveport, HARK programming, Sighed For Productions, and Red River Radio.

Listen to SAGAS broadcasts on the NPR stations in the Red River Radio system serving the Ark-La-Tex where Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas meet.

The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Bishop Blue Foundation: exploring the human endeavor!

The Rebel in Us All - Ep. 1

Rev. Harold Abraham (class of 1965 at Herndon High in Belcher, Louisiana) remembers attending segregated schools: 

Integration was not what we wanted. We wanted equal opportunity. If you didn't want to go to school with us that was fine with us, but just allow us to have the same thing.

Rev. Harold Abraham

Dr. Helen Kennedy Wise (class of 1989 at North Caddo High in Vivian, Louisiana) comments on the difficulties of desegregation: 

School integration becomes almost this point in time when we think a switch flipped and things automatically became different. Something became legal or illegal but it didn't change the cultural swell of opinion behind it.

Dr. Helen Kennedy Wise

Brenda Grundy Wells(class of 1969)remembers being the first Black graduate of North Caddo High in Vivian, Louisiana: 

We're standing there, and the bus zooms right past us. The driver decided she wasn't going to pick up ‘none of them n-words.’ So it was just ongoing all the time at North Caddo because you were treated differently, badly.

Brenda Grundy Wells

the SCHOOL SAGAS audio series . . .because the best history lessons aren't in textbooks

the SCHOOL SAGAS audio series

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