The Memory of Negro Fort Podcast examines how and why diverse groups of Americans remembered, erased, and invoked the memory of Negro Fort to contend with various social, cultural, and political issues since the nineteenth century. Analyzing government documents, published materials, newspapers, and other primary sources through the lens of historical memory enables us to illuminate why Negro Fort and its historical significance resonated with specific groups at certain times. Negro Fort remembrance also reveals why other groups have concealed its significance in broader narratives of American history. Throughout the podcast, we invite listeners to consider how such dialectic accentuates Negro Fort as a contentious space for these disparate groups to articulate larger claims about race and national identity since the nineteenth century. In addition to exhuming the fort’s contemporary obscurity, studying Negro Fort through the lens of historical memory also offers an apt case study to understand more broadly the centrality of memory to a nation’s past and present maintenance. Additionally, the podcast sharpens our historiographical contribution in subject and methods as previous scholars have dismissed the lens of memory to study Negro Fort and continue to publish their works in traditional spaces, which at some level contributes to the fort’s public amnesia as monographs and journal articles remain inaccessible to the most people.

“From Pitch to Product: Constructing The Memory of Negro Fort Podcast” will showcase our podcast primarily through a methodological lens. This session aims to demonstrate how we produced a seven-episode limited narrative podcast series by explaining the methods we used when developing each episode. Since our podcast focused on and used memory as an analytical tool, our production underlines how historians and memory scholars can use podcasting as an innovative instrument to understand historical memory and democratize such knowledge to a broad public audience. The explicit connection between historical podcasting and historical memory further bolsters our unique academic and public contributions, as such duality remains underexplored. Additionally, given that memory proves central to a nation’s story, such efforts to connect our research and findings to a broader public audience remain especially relevant. Lastly, and equally importantly, our session’s title recalls how our podcast benefited greatly from the AHA’s inaugural Sinclair Workshops on Historical Podcasting in 2025. As a result, this session epitomizes the professional value and intent of the AHA’s multi-year commitment to support historical podcasting.