ERASED: The Cataract House — How Black Waiters Freed Slaves One Quarter Mile from Canada

It Could Happen to Anybody | The Possibilities Documentary | Blind, Black & Fighting to Be Seen

A new documentary is putting the blind and low vision community at the center of its own story both on screen and behind the microphone. Possibilities, produced by the American Foundation for the Blind, is the first feature-length film made by blind and low vision filmmakers, and the first to fully integrate open audio description into the storytelling itself. In this episode of The Color Between the Lines, host Esther Dillard sits down with two of the voices behind this landmark film. Tony Stephens is Assistant Vice President of Communications at the American Foundation for the Blind, born legally blind, with more than 30 years at the intersection of disability rights, social justice, and media. He is a producer and featured voice in Possibilities and one of the foremost voices on Helen Keller's actual life, legacy, and complicated history. Krystle Allen is a Newark, New Jersey native, founder of Eyes Like Mine, Inc., a nonprofit supporting people who are blind, low vision, and deafblind, and one of the film's featured African American voices. In 2023 she became the first legally blind titleholder of the Ms. Newark USA Pageant. What unfolds in this conversation is something you won't hear anywhere else. Krystle was denied healthcare by a gynecologist who said she didn't feel comfortable treating her because she is blind. She filed a complaint, went through mediation, and was then legally restricted from telling that story for ten full years. She tells it here for the first time publicly. Tony connects the dots between the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the current climate threatening both Black history and disability inclusion making the case that these fights have never been separate. Possibilities premiered at Carnegie Hall on June 27, 2026 Helen Keller's 146th birthday and is now streaming on Apple TV and additional platforms worldwide. This is a story about what it means to be seen. And what happens when the people who are supposed to help you refuse. Watch Possibilities: https://afb.org/news-publications/media/possibilities [https://afb.org/news-publications/media/possibilities] Eyes Like Mine: https://eyeslikemine.org/team/ [https://eyeslikemine.org/team/] Free educator resources: https://substack.com/@iamestherdillard [https://substack.com/@iamestherdillard] Educator bundles: https://etsy.com/shop/ColorBtwLinesMarket [https://etsy.com/shop/ColorBtwLinesMarket] ---------------------------------------- CHAPTER MARKERS (adjust timecodes to match your final edit) 0:00 Cold open: "I didn't know blindness picked you by age" 0:25 Introducing Possibilities and the guests 1:00 What "made by us, for everyone" looked like on set 2:57 Why Carnegie Hall on Helen Keller's birthday 4:04 Krystle Allen: why she said yes 5:08 Being Black and blind: the nuances people miss 7:05 The gynecologist who refused to treat her 11:47 Ten years of silence: the agreement 14:27 Tony: same fight, new face? 15:35 What to take from this if you're losing your vision 16:37 Is disability history under the same threat as Black history? 19:04 Employment, technology, and what's changed 21:02 How Krystle lost her sight at 16 24:05 Final word: what we want you to believe differently

She Grew Up in His Studio | Charnelle Pinkney Barlow on Jerry Pinkney, Legacy, and the Book She Had to Write

Here is the corrected version two fixes made: Jerry Pickney Jerry Pinkney in the opening line, and Charnelle Pickney Barlow Charnelle Pinkney Barlow in the book credit. ---------------------------------------- Jerry Pinkney illustrated more than 100 children's books over nearly six decades. He was the first solo Black illustrator to win the Caldecott Medal. He designed U.S. postage stamps. He was the most exhibited illustrator in American museums. But his granddaughter knew him differently. Charnelle Pinkney Barlow grew up in his studio watching him work, listening to the music shift from upbeat in the morning to soft jazz in the evening, sitting in the oversized leather chair with her feet hovering off the floor, reading pages of books his readers wouldn't see for another year. Now she's an author and illustrator herself. Her debut picture book, Two Artists: Grandad and Me, is an intimate portrait of a legendary man seen through the eyes of the little girl who loved him most. In this conversation with host Esther Dillard, Charnelle talks about: The private world of Jerry Pinkney's studio what his readers never saw The moment she realized she had always been inside his work Why Black grandfather stories belong in children's literature The grandmother who handed her a two-sided sketchbook and told her to use both sides What she felt while writing this book and who she felt beside her Her advice for young writers who don't yet trust their own ideas This is a conversation about art, grief, legacy, and the stories families pass down without even knowing it. TWO ARTISTS: GRANDAD AND ME by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow Available wherever books are sold. FOR EDUCATORS Free discussion guide available at substack.com/@iamestherdillard Paid lesson bundle at etsy.com/shop/ColorBtwLinesMarket Grades 612 Classroom ready The Color Between the Lines is hosted by Esther Dillard anchor and reporter at the Black Information Network, two-time Gracie Award winner, and founder of ERASED: The Untold American Story. New episodes drop weekly.  Your story matters.

ERASED: The Cataract House — How Black Waiters Freed Slaves One Quarter Mile from Canada

Before the Civil War ended. Before Juneteenth and before anyone knew her name a fourteen year old girl stood at the edge of the Niagara River in the dark. Canada was a quarter mile away. And the only people who knew she was there were the Black men in white jackets clearing dinner tables inside a grand luxury hotel. This is the story of the Cataract House a five story hotel in Niagara Falls, New York where Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and two Kings of England were guests. What history never fully told is that the hotel's African American waitstaff, led by head waiter John Morrison, operated one of the most organized Underground Railroad networks in American history. Night after night these men used their invisibility as servants to smuggle freedom seekers across the Niagara River to Canada while wealthy white guests dined and danced above them completely unaware. In 1841 a fourteen year old enslaved girl escaped through the Cataract House with their help. The man who enslaved her wrote a letter to a New Orleans newspaper to complain. The waiters kept their jobs. She never went back. This episode drops on Juneteenth June 19th because this is exactly the kind of story Juneteenth asks us to remember. The freedom that was celebrated on that day in 1865 was built on the courage of people like John Morrison and that unnamed girl who crossed a dark river in the middle of the night and never looked back. Host Esther Dillard a Buffalo, New York native brings this story home. Because Niagara Falls is thirty minutes from Buffalo. Because Buffalo is one of the oldest Juneteenth celebration cities in America. And because some stories don't travel far enough from the people who need to hear them most. This is ERASED. And this story has been waiting too long to be told. ---------------------------------------- HISTORICAL RECORD  The Cataract House operated from 1825 to 1945 on the banks of the Niagara River in Niagara Falls, New York. The full history is preserved at the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center niagarafallsundergroundrailroad.org ---------------------------------------- EDUCATOR RESOURCES Free discussion guide and paid lesson bundle available at: Etsy: ColorBtwLinesMarket TPT: Search Esther Dillard ERASED Substack: substack.com/@iamestherdillard ---------------------------------------- ABOUT ERASED ERASED: The Untold American Story is a documentary podcast series hosted by two-time Gracie Award winning journalist and anchor Esther Dillard. Each episode uncovers a person or place that history chose not to remember until now. Previous episodes: ERASED: Elizabeth Jennings Graham ERASED: Robert Smalls ERASED: Harriet Tubman ---------------------------------------- CONNECT WITH ESTHER Website: estherdillard.com Substack: substack.com/@iamestherdillard Etsy: ColorBtwLinesMarket YouTube: @thecolorbetweenthelines

We Choose Each Other Again | Martin Luther King III & Arndrea Waters King

They eloped six months after his mother died. No reception, no celebration because after the world had mourned Coretta Scott King so publicly, quiet felt like the right thing to do. Twenty years later, Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King are doing what they never got to do. They are standing before the people they love and saying: we choose each other. Again. On purpose. Right now. Host Esther Dillard sits down with the couple just days before their vow renewal ceremony to ask what twenty years actually looks like from the inside. What you will hear in this conversation: The blind date that almost never happened and the moment Arndrea knew The sign from Coretta Scott King on the 405 freeway on their wedding day Why they chose this particular moment in American history to recommit How Arndrea carries a public legacy without losing her private self What Coretta taught her son about love, leadership, and liberating a child to find their own path The advice they want every couple especially Black couples to carry into their own hard seasons And how two parents are feeling as their daughter Yolanda Renee King prepares to graduate and head to Columbia University This is one of the most honest and human conversations in the history of this show. Put in your earbuds and give yourself the full ride. Educator resources and discussion guides at ColorBtwLinesMarket on Etsy. Free resources at substack.com/@iamestherdillard Your story matters. Esther Dillard

The State That Made Black History Mandatory - Dr. Patrick J. Lamy - The Color Between the Lines

In 2002, New Jersey became the first state in the country to make Black history mandatory not just in February, not just in one subject, but across every grade level and every classroom, all year long. Most Americans have never heard of that law. Dr. Patrick J. Lamy, Executive Director of the New Jersey Amistad Commission, is the man making sure it actually happens.   Host Esther Dillard sits down with Dr. Lamy for a candid conversation recorded during National Teacher Appreciation Week. They cover the 2026 Amistad Summer Institute now the largest in the Commission's 17-year history with 360 registered educators what it actually takes to move 600 school districts without any enforcement power, why Black educators are leaving the profession at higher rates than their colleagues, and why Dr. Lamy says the most compelling argument for teaching Black history isn't coming from him. It's coming directly from students.   This is a conversation for every educator, parent, and community member who believes that knowing the full truth of American history makes better students, stronger communities, and more informed citizens.   REGISTER 2026 Amistad Summer Institute July 2830, 2026  |  Kean University  |  FREE Virtual attendance open through June 15, 2026 njamistad.gov   Free educator discussion guides: substack.com/@iamestherdillard Educator bundles: etsy.com/shop/ColorBtwLinesMarket   The Color Between the Lines is produced by Esther Dillard and distributed through the Alive Podcast Network.