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If you’ve spent any time on Urban Intellectuals — reading the articles, going through the flashcards, finding history you were never taught in school — there’s someone behind all of it. His name is Freddie Taylor. And if you’re just now discovering this community, you should know who he is.

Because this isn’t just a website. It’s a mission. And it started with one man who got tired of Black history being treated like a footnote.

Who Is Freddie Taylor?

Freddie Taylor is the founder of Urban Intellectuals, one of the largest Black history education platforms in the United States. He built this community over more than a decade, starting with social media posts that resonated deeply — stories of resistance, culture, and achievement that weren’t being told anywhere else.

But Freddie isn’t just a content creator. He’s an educator, author, and advocate who believes that knowing your history changes how you move through the world. That when Black children see the full scope of what their ancestors built, survived, and created — it transforms them.

That belief became a platform. The platform became a community. The community became a movement.

What He Built — And Why

Urban Intellectuals started as a simple idea: what if Black history was presented in a way that made people excited to learn? Not dry textbook recitations. Not sanitized, comfortable versions that left out the struggle and the genius. Real history. Full history. The kind that makes you put your phone down and say “wait, I never knew that.”

Freddie created the Black History Flashcards — now used by hundreds of thousands of families — because he wanted parents to have a tool. Something they could use at the dinner table, in the car, during family game night. A way to pass on knowledge that the school system wasn’t passing on.

And then he wrote 50 Truths They Tried to Erase — a book that goes deeper. Into the history of resistance and Black power and cultural survival. Into the facts that were deliberately buried. Into the story of a people who kept building, kept creating, kept standing, no matter what was thrown at them.

Why People Are Finding Freddie Now

In a moment where Black history is being banned in classrooms, where curriculum rollbacks are making headlines, where parents are asking “where do I go when school won’t teach my child the truth?” — they’re finding Urban Intellectuals.

They’re finding Freddie’s work because it fills a real gap. Because it doesn’t water things down. Because it respects both the intelligence of the reader and the weight of the history.

And because it’s clearly made by someone who cares. Deeply. Personally. With the kind of conviction that you can feel in every article, every flashcard, every chapter.

What Urban Intellectuals Stands For

Freddie built Urban Intellectuals on a few core beliefs:

• History is identity. You cannot know where you’re going if you don’t know where you came from.
• Education is an act of resistance. Especially when that education has been systematically withheld.
• Community changes everything. Learning in isolation is hard. Learning together — with tools, stories, and shared commitment — is transformative.
• Black children deserve to see themselves fully. Not as victims. As innovators, leaders, builders, and survivors.

These aren’t just taglines. They’re the architecture of everything you’ll find here.

Where to Start

If you’re new to Urban Intellectuals, here’s what Freddie’s built that you should know about:

The Black History Flashcards — The flagship product. Designed for families, classrooms, and anyone who wants a daily dose of real Black history. Thousands of facts, figures, events, and stories across every era and category. Browse the full collection here.

50 Truths They Tried to Erase — Freddie’s book. The one that people keep recommending to each other in group chats. A deep dive into Black power, culture, and resistance — the chapters that history class never reached. Get the book here.

The Blog — Articles like this one. Deep dives into history, culture, parenting, and the current moment. Written for people who want context, not just content.

Why This Work Matters Right Now

This isn’t abstract. In 2025 and 2026, states across the country have passed laws restricting what can be taught in public schools about race, slavery, and Black history. Books are being removed from library shelves. Teachers are being told what they cannot say in front of children.

In that environment, platforms like Urban Intellectuals don’t just fill a gap — they become essential infrastructure. A place where the record gets kept. Where the stories survive. Where families can find what institutions have decided to hide.

Freddie Taylor built this before it was urgent. Which means it was ready when urgency arrived.

If you’re here for the first time, you’re in the right place. Look around. The history has been waiting for you.

📚 Related Reading

• Start Here: What Is Urban Intellectuals and Who Is It For?
• Why Every Black Family Needs a Set of Black History Flashcards
• I love a good Uno Reverse

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🎙️ LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE

Prefer to listen? We turned this article into a podcast conversation.

There’s a reason this book keeps showing up in people’s search results, group chats, and wishlists. A reason people who’ve never heard of Urban Intellectuals are suddenly finding their way to a page called 50 Truths They Tried to Erase.

The title does exactly what Freddie Taylor intended it to do: it tells you the truth before you even open the cover. They tried to erase this. You’re about to find it anyway.

This is what the book is, why it was written, and why you need it on your shelf right now — not eventually, not as a gift for someone else. Now.

What “They Tried to Erase” Actually Means

Let’s not be coy about it. The erasure of Black history, Black power, and Black resistance has never been accidental. It’s been a project — with funding, with policy, with active suppression in schools, in publishing, in what gets preserved and what gets quietly allowed to disappear.

The past few years have made this more visible, not less. Book bans targeting Black history in classrooms. Curriculum changes rolling back discussions of race and slavery. State-level laws restricting what teachers can say about American history in front of children who are living American history every day.

Freddie Taylor wrote 50 Truths They Tried to Erase: Black Power, Culture, and Resistance, Uncovered in direct response to this moment. Not as a reactive document. As a permanent record.

The Power in the Title

The word “uncovered” in that subtitle matters. This isn’t a book about victimhood. It’s a book about resilience, resistance, and the communities and individuals who built culture, power, and joy in the face of systematic suppression.

Fifty truths. Fifty entry points into a version of history that the mainstream curriculum has always been reluctant to teach with the fullness it deserves.

Think about what your children currently know about Black resistance movements in America. About Black Power as a political and cultural force. About the specific figures — many of them women, many of them young people — who built the infrastructure of resistance that the movements we do celebrate were built on top of.

Most of them know fragments. Freddie wrote a book to fill in what’s missing.

Why This Book Hits Different Right Now

We’re in a particular moment in American history. The suppression of Black history education has moved from quiet to loud, from subtext to policy. It’s being argued about in school board meetings, in state legislatures, in the highest courts in the country.

In that context, a book called 50 Truths They Tried to Erase isn’t just educational. It’s a statement. It’s an act of preservation. It says: we know what you’re doing, and we’re writing it down anyway.

This is the same energy that drove the creation of the Black History Flashcard series. The same energy that has driven Urban Intellectuals for two decades. The conviction that our history is worth preserving, that our children are worth educating, and that we don’t have to wait for the curriculum to catch up to do it ourselves.

Who This Book Is For

This book is for the parent who has been having these conversations at the kitchen table but wants more material, more names, more specifics to bring.

It’s for the grandparent who lived through some of this history and wants their grandchildren to understand what that era actually felt like from the inside.

It’s for the young adult who grew up with the sanitized version and is now discovering, piece by piece, how much was left out.

It’s for the book club that wants to go deeper than the titles that get mainstream press coverage.

And it’s for anyone who believes, as Freddie does, that an informed community is a protected community. That the best inoculation against propaganda is knowledge.

How to Use It in Your Family

Read it yourself first. Mark the sections that hit you hardest. Then come back to those sections with your kids.

Use it the same way you might use the Black History Flashcards — not as a lecture, but as a conversation starter. “Did you know this?” “What do you think about that?” “Have you heard of this person before?”

The flashcards give you 52 entry points per volume. The book gives you 50 more. Together they’re the beginning of a home curriculum that doesn’t depend on whether your school district has decided your children deserve the truth this year.

We know they do. We’ve always known that.

Where to Get It

You can find 50 Truths They Tried to Erase directly at the Urban Intellectuals store. It ships fast, and if you want to build out a full home library, pair it with the flashcard collection — multiple volumes covering Black history from the pre-1492 era through S.T.E.A.M., women’s history, and the Afro-Latino and Caribbean diaspora.

This is the kind of infrastructure that doesn’t disappear when a school board votes. It’s yours. It lives in your home.

Who in your family needs this book most right now? Tag them. Send this to them. Let them know you found it.

Love, peace, and power to the people.
— Freddie