Educators

The Shadow Ball Show is designed as primary source audio: each episode is a verbatim reading of a historical newspaper account from the Black press.
This makes the series useful for classroom discussion in history, journalism, media studies, sports history, and African American studies.

Suggested classroom uses

• Primary source analysis: voice, bias, audience assumptions

• Sports + social history: how communities covered themselves

• Media literacy: compare Black press vs mainstream coverage

• Research practice: cite the episode’s newspaper/date/page line

Discussion prompts

• What does the writer assume the reader already knows?

• What details are emphasized (and what is omitted)?

• How does the language reflect the era’s priorities and constraints?

• What does “news” look like when written for a specific community?

Citations

Each episode includes a full citation line (newspaper and date). Teachers and students can use these for bibliographies.

Contact for educational use: shadowballpodcast@gmail.com