'What A Day' host Akilah Hughes on civil rights activist Constance Baker Motley
This article has been published to coincide with an episode of Mashable's new podcast, History Becomes Her. Listen here.
Podcasting has a representation problem. There are more podcasts than ever before, but women and people of colour are still sorely underrepresented as hosts, especially when it comes to daily news.
Akilah Hughes is a writer, comedian, YouTuber, and podcaster. Hughes is the co-host of Crooked Media's What A Day podcast and one of the few black women hosting a daily news podcast.
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This week's episode is hosted by Jess Joho, Mashable's LA-based staff writer. In this episode, Hughes discusses representation in podcasting, her book Obviously: Stories from My Timeline, and how she practices self-care as someone reporting on daily news.
You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode was recorded in Feb. 2020, during Black History Month in the U.S. when the Democratic Primaries were in full swing.
In the episode, Hughes shares her admiration for Constance Baker Motley, an African-American civil rights activist and the first African-American woman to become a federal judge. Motley was the assistant attorney to Thurgood Marshall arguing the case Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
"I think that she's someone we're celebrating that we never hear about," says Hughes.
Motley was the first black woman to serve in the New York State Senate and the first woman to be Manhattan Borough President.
Motley was a lead trial attorney for a number of significant civil rights cases, and represented Martin Luther King, Jr., the Freedom Riders, and the Birmingham Children Marchers. She was widely regarded as the leading courtroom strategist of the civil rights movement.
As the host of What A Day, Akilah Hughes brings a refreshing approach to political discourse you'll be hard pressed to find elsewhere.
"As a black woman — not to speak for all of us — but I think historically, we have shown up for every group of people. And because of that, I think that I read the news differently. And my take on the news is different."
Subscribe to History Becomes Her on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Topics Activism Social Good
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
