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Throughline

Throughline For Black History Month, Throughline presents two special episodes, profiling remarkable, pioneering Black women.

Sunday, February 21 at 7 p.m.: Billie Holiday and Shirley Chisholm
When Billie Holiday was harassed by U.S. government agents and told to stop singing ‘Strange Fruit,’ she refused. When Shirley Chisholm ran for president and was ridiculed and told she shouldn’t aim that high politically, she refused. On this episode of Throughline, two pioneering Black women, Billie Holiday and Shirley Chisholm, who set their own sights and never backed down from a fight.

Sunday, February 28 at 7 p.m.: Octavia Butler
Octavia Butler was a deep observer of the human condition, perplexed and inspired by our propensity towards self-destruction. She described herself as a pessimist, “if I’m not careful.” As an award-winning science fiction writer and ‘mother of Afrofuturism’, her visionary works of alternate realities reveal striking, and often devastating parallels to the world we live in today. Butler was fascinated by the cyclical nature of history, and often looked to the past when writing about the future. She broke on to the science fiction scene at a time when she knew of no other Black women in the field, saying she simply had to ‘write herself in.’