This is an exploratory paper, drawing on the author's experiences as well as those of three other black lecturers in Higher Education (HE). Three interviews were carried out, asking the same five questions around themes of concern to the author. These are about the learning and teaching approaches used by these lecturers; their experiences of racism in HE; the professional role that they feel they play in HE; their strategies for the empowerment of black students and finally the meaning of academic "success" from their perspective. The individual narratives that emerge are explored and commonalities between them and with the author's own experiences and hopes are identified.It is the desire of this work to add to the scholarship on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Pedagogy and to emphasise the need for more counter-hegemonic narratives from the "black" experience in HE. This is explored through the voices of these academics as they recount their strategies for a more equitable student experience in the classroom, on modules and on curricula, based on their lived experience and shared history of racism.