Interview with Terriana Lynn Bradley, June 5, 2025

Sound recording

Terriana Lynn Bradley, interviewed by Micah Sagers, describes being originally from Detroit, Michigan and her move to Madison, Wisconsin for work in 2020, for her first career after college. She explains moving during the Covid-19 pandemic felt like she was getting to know and interact with the city when it was not operating at its full potential. Terriana shares that finding different Black spaces, like churches and professional groups, helped her build a sense of community. She describes how she formed relationships with other young Black professionals through the Urban League and describes how the Urban League’s Black Business Hub is a welcoming space where people support one another. She explains how the Black Business Hub provides room for businesses run by people of color, such as a coffee shop, beauty school, and podcast studio, all within the same building. Terriana describes her work as an engineer but also as an artist, creating poetry and paintings in her free time. She emphasizes the importance of having a creative outlet and speaks about art as a vital form of expression and resilience for Black people in Madison. She enjoys attending events in the city that center the arts and believes that Black excellence is deeply connected to Black art and joy. This interview was conducted for the Building a Black Center: Geographies of Resistance and Liberation in a Capital City Oral History Project, by the SoulFolk Collective, housed in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Eleven doctoral, masters, and undergraduate students within the SoulFolk Collective, led by African American Studies Professor and lab creator Jessica Lee Stovall, Ph.D., conducted oral history interviews to learn how Black residents use space, understand and witness Black excellence and culture in Madison, and their thoughts, hopes and concerns in relation to the development of The Center for Black Excellence and Culture in Madison, Wisconsin. This interview was conducted by Micah Sagers.