Colin Dekeersgieter sits down with poet and scholar Emilio Taiveaho Peláez for the second part of their discussion on Langston Hughes's visit to Chapel Hill and his publications in Contempo: A Review of Books and Personalities.
"Under discussion here is Langston Hughes’s 1931 poem 'Christ in Alabama' & listenin’ through this conversation it’s clear that it was a different (and sadly the same) world when this was recorded. Colin & I sat down on May 16 to have this discussion, nine days before the (yet again) public, viral homicide of George Floyd — the hip hop artist Big Floyd — at the hands of the police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The case of the Scottsboro Boys (discussed in this two-part podcast), the history and legacies of lynching, and police brutality as a public performance of whiteness, are not unrelated...
This podcast, a conversation about systemic racism, poetry, music, and collective identity, attempts to unpack and reckon with a history of institutional hatred and the dehumanization of Black Life, topics that are important for White Audiences to confront—now more than ever.
'If you know your history / Then you would know where you coming from.'
Black Stories Matter, Black Lives Matter." — Emilio Taiveaho Peláez
