Our ancestors were just people — Nichole Hill

Our ancestors were just people — Nichole Hill

From Homegoings by Vermont Public

November 19, 2025 · 31 min

About this episode

Nichole Hill discusses the complexities of telling the stories of Black historical figures, emphasizing their humanity and flaws.

Nichole Hill is the award-winning showrunner and creator of Our Ancestors Were Messy , a 2024 Official Tribeca Audio Selection. Through her show, Nichole is pulling the rug out from under the pedestal we tend to put figures in Black history on. To her, people like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston were huge contributors to Black culture. But...they were also just people . Sometimes messy people. In this episode we chat with Nichole about the great responsibility that comes with telling our ancestors’ stories truthfully — flaws and all. Homegoings is a production of Vermont Public. Follow the show here . This episode was hosted and reported by executive producer, Myra Flynn and mixed by Burgess Brown. Our video director is Mike Dunn and Aaron Edwards is our story editor. Myra composed the theme music with other music by Blue Dot Sessions. Kyle Ambusk is the graphic artist behind this episode’s Homegoings portrait . Thank you for listening. You can see this episode on our YouTube channel . To continue to be part of the Homegoings family: Subscribe to our YouTube channel Sign up for the Homegoings newsletter Write to us at: hey@homegoings.co Follow us on Instagram…

People in this episode

Host: Myra Flynn

Guest: Nichole Hill

Topics covered

  • Black history
  • storytelling
  • cultural contributions
  • messiness of ancestors
  • responsibility in narratives

Keywords

  • Black culture
  • ancestors
  • storytelling
  • history
  • messy people
  • responsibility

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Vermont Public, Our Ancestors Were Messy, Tribeca Audio

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