Emile YX? is a Hip Hop activist who reclaims the power of Hip Hop to help the next generation rethink their identity, purpose, and place in their respective communities. A pioneer of beat breaking in his South African cultural context, an educator through his Heal the Hood project, and a survivor of apartheid, Emile YX? channels his experiences to rewrite narratives for the marginalized and recenter Africa for uplift. In the process, he helps us rethink Hip Hop culture as a tool of power through this podcast.

 Support Heal the Hood Project's new initiative through Emile YX? Gofund me page: www.gofundme.com/f/preorder-my-book-reconnect-the-string

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Akua Naru's love for the African diaspora drives her to disrupt and intervene for good through the channel of her Hip Hop music and archival work of The Keeper’s Project. More specifically, the pantheon of black women writers like Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Zora Neal Hurston have provided Naru with a critical black feminist lens and language by which to read the world and retake spaces that push the contributions of black women to Hip Hop to the margins to the center. Living with the words of black feminists, Naru tells her story, helping us rethink the centrality of blackness for identity construction and the potentialities of love within Hip Hop through this podcast.

Listen to Akua Naru's music here.
Find out where she is performing next here. 

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The Gullah-Geechee people are the descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans brought in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century to the United States to work on the rice plantations of the Low Country regions on the Southern Atlantic coastline. The term “Gullah” comes from the Central African connection to Angola and comes to represent people of all African descent particularly from South Carolina. In contrast, the term “Geechee” is derived from the Ogeechee River where the first Georgia plantations were formed. Eventually, these terms are fused by Queen Quet, the first elected chieftess and Head of State for the Gullah-Geechee nation, to speak of a unified identity among these communities as they seek to preserve their land and memory in the face of modern developers and coastal shoreline erosion. Ultimately, the Gullah-Geechee communities have a strong sense of identity, a preserved African heritage, and are rooted to the Atlantic coastlines. This episode features three guests:  Dr. Ras Michael Brown who is an Associate Professor in the History department at Georgia State University, Dr. Tiffany Player who is Assistant Professor of History at Georgia State University and their student Ms. Natasha Washington. Dr. Brown and Dr. Player have created on-the-ground learning opportunities for students to visit historical landmarks in South Carolina . They  have joined in collaboration with Gullah-Geechee partners in the effort of preserving memory and Gullah-Geechee historical landmarks. 

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On this episode of Intersectionality in the American South, Dr. Katie Acosta interviews Dr. Ashlyn Strozier about the challenges faced by Black folks who are trying to conceive,  birthing, or experiencing unwanted pregnancy. Listen as we unpack the health risks this population faces and that structural barriers that impede upon our reproductive rights.   

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Imagine being incarcerated during the height of the pandemic and having limited access to information about the virus. Imagine being unable to socially isolated or visit with your loved ones.  On this episode,  Dr. Katie Acosta interviews civil rights attorney Whitney Knox Lee about her advocacy work with people who are incarcerated in the state of Georgia.
 
Listen to Whitney Knox Lee's new podcast Impostrix here. 

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Poor choices led Patrick Rodriguez—Executive Director of a prison education program at Georgia State University—to extensive time in prison. However, his time in prison demythologized conceptions of the incarcerated as hopelessly depraved individuals as he found a community of “mentors” who wanted better for him and even advocated for him, enabling him to understand his choices and see a potential future beyond them. Consequently, that led to his role in prison education, seeking to end the stigma attached to incarcerated people, create space for collaboration, and reduce the return to prison pipeline through access to higher education. 

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Anthony Downer is an Equity Coordinator for the City Schools of Decatur. In his work, Downer advocates for a curriculum beyond the standards that encourages antiracist, culturally responsive, courageous teaching in the school system that can uplift black students. Recognizing students lack of contact with multicultural narratives and bureaucratic pushback against Critical Race Theory reinforces inequitable educational outcomes, he calls on teachers to not simply wait for systemic change but in an exercise of ingenuity to be and build what they are demanding. In the process, the podcast helps listeners learn how teachers can service black students today while they fight for something better tomorrow.

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Beacon Hill Black Alliance is an organization of committed Decatur residents challenging the racist structures in Decatur, Ga. As Black history is American history, the white-washed monuments and symbols in Decatur say otherwise as Black and indigenous peoples historical presence are rendered absent while their contemporary presence is continually threatened by Decatur as it stands. However, through Beacon Hill’s Art for the People work, educational initiatives, and advocacy, they attempt to tell the untold and model how everyday ordinary people have power to exercise that can create social change. 

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Charity Woods Barnes—founder of the Reproductive Justice Resilience Project—re-centers women of color as fundamental in building a movement for reproductive justice that champions abortion rights yet goes beyond the abortion legality framework upended by Dobbs v. Jackson. Consequently, reproductive justice and resiliency are shown to go hand in hand among Black women, leading Barnes to call for balancing stories of oppression with stories of Black women’s strength. In this episode, she helps listeners to rethink advocacy for reproductive justice as a wholistic project, demanding one to both have and live out reproductive justice principles for the purpose of communal healing. 

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When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost was published in 1999, Joan Morgan used the vehicle of Hip Hop to birth a vision for Black feminism that would render her a “pioneer.” After 23 years, Morgan celebrates Hip-Hop’s formative role yet pushes beyond its bounds for a larger vision of Black feminist thought while continuing the work of conferring liberatory frameworks for black and brown women. In this episode, Morgan unpacks this by reckoning with her cultural impact, negotiating her whole self within the academy, making space for multiple feminisms within Black feminism, and sharing her work as a scholar-practitioner as she directs NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture.


Check out her work at NYU's Center for Black Visual Culture: https://cbvc.nyu.edu/

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