She Turned Her Pain Into Power After an Acid Attack
Karli Butler
Karli Butler shares her fight for equity and opens up about surviving a targeted acid attack at the age of 23.
Latest episode · Ep. 04
Liberation Looks Like This | Llyoandra Cooper on Uncompromising Autonomy
What does it truly mean to show up as your most authentic self? Llyoandra Cooper explores the intersection of identity, education, and the courage it takes to live with uncompromising autonomy. She shares her journey as a Black woman in higher education, emphasizing that success is defined on our own terms.
The Archive
All episodes →What It Takes to Protect Our Neighborhoods
Renée Phillips
Renée Phillips discusses the critical need for youth enrichment programs and housing advocacy.
From Segregated Mississippi to the Corporate Boardroom
Venita Fields
Venita Fields shares her powerful journey from growing up in segregated Mississippi to becoming a successful entrepreneur and corporate board director.
Mission
The record of how they did it.
New episode every month.
Our Unseen Roots records the women nourishing the Black community while they are still doing the work — in their own words, on the record, in ordinary time.
The women who hold Black communities together are recognized, when they're recognized at all, after the fact and by outsiders: an obituary, a plaque, a news cycle that arrives only when something has gone wrong. The record of how they did it is never taken down while they're still doing it. So the method dies with them, and the next generation inherits the reverence without the instructions.
We document not that these women are admired, but how they did it — so the method survives them.
How we choose subjects
A subject qualifies because her actions changed someone else's life. Demonstrable, traceable, nameable. Not because she is well liked, and not because she holds a title.
[ Portrait of Butch — real photograph, not a screengrab ]
Our team
Lionel “Butch” Gentle
Founder · Editor · Interviewer
Butch's bio goes here in his own voice — the Chicago version. Two to four short paragraphs on where he's from, why he started documenting these women, and what he did before this. Written for a reader who has never heard of him.
The bio names people and places specifically. It does not use the word "channel." It does not use the word "documentary."
Copy pending from Butch