Jermaine Fowler is a historian, educator, content creator, and New York Times bestselling author whose work focuses heavily on African American history and politics. Fowler attended Western Kentucky University in 2016, beginning a career that would eventually take him well beyond the traditional classroom.
One of the most interesting things about Fowler’s career is how he has expanded the historian’s role. Rather than keeping his work inside books and academic spaces, he brings history directly to people through YouTube, social media, his website, media appearances, education consulting, public speaking, and corporate training. His media work has included appearances on PBS’s American Experience, while his online presence lets him reach audiences who may never pick up an academic history book.
The internet has changed who gets to participate in conversations about history. You don’t necessarily need to be sitting in a university lecture hall anymore. You can learn about a historical event while scrolling through TikTok, watching YouTube before bed, or casually opening Instagram when you were supposed to be doing something else.
History Goes Viral
Fowler has built a significant audience across several social media platforms:
- TikTok: 21.5K followers, 801.5K likes
- Instagram: 1.3M followers, 1,224 posts
- X: 2,318 followers
- Facebook: 158K followers, 1.5K posts
TikTok and Instagram are his primary social platforms, with content overlapping between the two. His posts include video commentary that challenges historical narratives and encourages viewers to reconsider the stories they may have learned in school. Like Instagram and TikTok, his Facebook features similar educational and commentary-based content. However, Facebook also provides links to articles on his website and contains less video content.
Fowler’s presence on X appears to be considerably less active than his activity on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. His most recent activity includes an August 19 post sharing an article titled “Democrats are still answering 2026 with 2016.” His inactivity on X could possibly be attributed to Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his involvement in the Trump Administration. It could also be due to the creation of Twitter alternatives such as Bluesky and Threads. While he does have these accounts, he does not promote or link to them on his website.
Fowler’s online presence extends beyond his social media platforms. He also operates The Humanity Archive, a website that began as a podcast; it now serves as a hub for his social media presence and a place to promote his book, The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from Whitewashed American Myth. The book sparked several debates about censorship and how Black History should be taught, or whether it should be taught at all. Fowler also has a YouTube page, which lets him expand his storytelling into longer videos. His YouTube content explores revisionism and under-discussed interpretations of history, including topics such as “What Really Happened at Jamestown Colony.”