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New digital series promotes Black-owned Iowa businesses

Talk of Iowa, hosted by Charity Nebbe

A California native is paying it forward with a new digital showcase of Black-owned businesses in Iowa and beyond.

Talk of Iowa host Charity Nebbe talks with Iowa State University graduate and CBS Mornings associate producer Nik Heftman about his personal mission to give back to the state where he learned the craft of media production through The Seven Times.

Launched in November 2022, The Seven Times has featured businesses in California and Iowa with a series of promotional videos Heftman produced, highlighting Black triumph.

Nebbe talks with Heftman about what The Seven Times means, and the support the project has received from the Des Moines-based Evelyn K. Davis Center for Working Families with director Ahmed Agyeman.

Also in this episode, the June 2015 murder of nine African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina at the hands of a self-proclaimed white supremacist galvanized Bree Newsome to climb the South Carolina statehouse flagpole. State officials had continued to fly the Confederate Battle Flag - an emblem of white supremacy that the mass murderer posted online before he committed the crime.

Newsome joins the program to talk about the act of tearing down that flag and her lecture "Tearing Hate from the Sky" that she will be giving as part of ISU's annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Series on January 30.

Guests:

  • Nik Heftman, owner, The Seven Times
  • Ahmed Agyeman, director, Evelyn K. Davis Center for Working Families
  • Bree Newsome, artist and human rights activist
Charity Nebbe is the host of IPR's Talk of Iowa
Samantha McIntosh is a talk show producer at Iowa Public Radio. Prior to IPR, Samantha worked as a reporter for radio stations in southeast and west central Iowa under M&H Broadcasting, and before that she was a weekend music host for GO 96.3 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.