Strange Fruit

It's music festival season in Louisville, and this year, there's a new event on the calendar. This week we talk with Tay G, one of the organizers of Louievolve, a two-day festival celebrating Louisville hip-hop scene and culture. Tay G says the festival will be more than just music—much like hip-hop itself. "The music is just one part of it," he explains. Live graffiti and break dancing have their place in hip-hop culture too, and will be part of the festival. "Just as an MC is trying to make himself look like the best MC out, writing your name on the wall does that same thing, it's just not through the audio," he says. "It's all tied into that culture and the foundations of hip-hop, and the people that came from different places to create it." The Louievolve Festival will be at the Tim Faulkner Gallery on April 16-17. For the past 30 years, Dr. Michael Kimmel has been studying what it means to be a man, and trying to engage men in the work of gender equality (the Atlantic has called him "The Bro Whisperer"). When he was in Louisville to deliver the Minx Auerbach lecture at the University of Louisville, Kimmel told us the story of his appearance on a television segment with four white men who believed that affirmative action was victimizing white men. One of his fellow panelists talked about being qualified for a job that was eventually given to another candidate — a situation he summarized as, "a black woman stole my job." "I want to know about the word 'my,'" Kimmel says. "Where did you get the idea it was your job? Why isn't it, 'A black woman got the job,' or 'A black woman got a job?'" Examining that sense of ownership became the kernel of his book, Angry White Men. "Because without confronting men's sense of entitlement, we can never understand why so many men resist gender equality." And in our closing thoughts, we invite you to follow the hashtag #StoryJacksonWeddingOnTheRun this weekend. The big day is finally here! WFPL and #TeamStrangeFruit congratulate our very own Kaila Story and her fiancée Missy Jackson, who are getting married this weekend!

In lieu of our regular show this week, here's a special project #TeamStrangeFruit did with our station, WFPL. This special is part of WFPL's year-long project, The Next Louisville: Race, Ethnicity and Culture. In the United States, we like to think that our success is determined only by how hard we work. But in reality, some of it’s just luck. And some of that luck has to do with things we can’t control: Our race. Our gender. Our sexual orientation. What language we grow up speaking. We might not ask for the advantages we get from those things, but we still get them. And that’s what’s known as privilege. In "Privilege Check," we explore the concept of privilege, how it affects our lives and how it can be used to make everyone more equal. It's part of the Next Louisville, a partnership of WFPL News and the Community Foundation. Listen to the hour-long discussion — hosted by WFPL's Tara Anderson and Strange Fruit's Kaila Story — in the player above. (Photo by Nathan Gibbs)

If you think of poetry slams as sedate affairs where people sip wine and read monotonously from notebooks, you might want to go visit one. Louisville's vibrant poetry slam scene is made up of a diverse groups of poets reciting works that often tackle deeply personal topics, and encourage audience reaction and participation. But as encouraging as these spaces are of free expression, Louisville poet Rheonna Thornton noticed they didn't always feel welcoming to women poets. "And when they did go up," she said, "you'd hear, 'another angry black woman piece.'" So Thornton started her own poetry slam, for women: Lipstick Wars. Thornton joins us this week to talk about how she made that happen, and to look ahead at her next project, The Lip gloss Diaries, a poetry slam for girls ages 15-18. She also sits in for our Juicy Fruit segment, where this week, where we keep the Women's History Month love going by celebrating 10th grader Akilah Johnson. Her Google doodle, which honors her African-American heritage, was selected from 100,000 submissions to the "Doodle 4 Google" competition for young artists.

Sixth grader Marley Dias loves to read. But the books she was assigned in school never seemed to have protagonists who looked like her. So she started a nationwide book drive to collect 1,000 books featuring black girls as main characters. By the time her self-imposed deadline came around (February 1st), Marley had amassed a book collection she says is important not just for black girls, but for everyone. "We all know that America is er very, very, very diverse," she says, "but we're not really seeing it in the literature that we're pushed to read." Marley says reading books about black girls' lives makes her feel like her own experiences are part of a bigger, more universal story. "I know who I am," she says, "but you still want to see it in other places, so you don't feel like something that's rare and that's never really been around." In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we talk about how a lynching postcard made its way into the table decor at a Joe's Crab Shack in Minnesota (and how referring to a lynching as a "public execution" ignores the historical context of the act). And we also send love to a young gay couple, Marquez Tolbert and Anthony Gooden, in Georgia. They're recovering from injuries sustained when Gooden's mother's boyfriend poured boiling water on them as they slept. Georgia doesn't have a hate crime law, so their assailant Martin Blackwell won't be charged with a hate crime, though he allegedly told them, "Get out of my house with all that gay," after the attack. According to a police report, Blackwell told officers, "They were stuck together like two hot dogs … so I poured a little hot water on them and help them out […] They’ll be alright. It was just a little hot water.” In fact, they suffered severe burns that required skin grafts and are still in physical therapy and counseling. Gooden was placed in a medically-induced coma for several weeks, and Tolbert has to wear compression garments for two years to help him heal. The couple has a GoFundMe page to raise money for their medical treatment.

A few weeks ago we introduced you to oSha Shireman and Charles Booker, two of the people who are working on the West Louisville Food Port. The proposed project would bring together farmers, distributors, retailers, educators and other food-related endeavors to a 24-acre campus at 30th and W. Market Streets. But not everyone is convinced that the plan is what's best for the neighborhood, and questions have been raised about whether proper procedures were followed as the proposal moved through the planning process. This week we talk to three community leaders who oppose the Food Port. Councilwoman Mary Woolridge represents Louisville Third District, where the project would be. Martina Kunnecke is the president of Neighborhood Planning & Preservation, Inc., and John Owen is a business owner in Portland. Owen says neighborhood leaders proposed a similar project in 2000, but the city didn't approve. He also worries that the Food Port food will be too expensive for its own neighbors to purchase. "If you're spending on a tight dollar in a community like Portland or Russell, you can't afford a six dollar bell pepper," he says. "They're being unrealistic." Owen also points out that Seed Capital (the company behind the Food Port) refused to sign a promise that the site won't include a biodigester in the the future (a biodigester was part of the Food Port plan at one time, but neighbors objected, and it was eventually scrapped). "They wouldn't even consider signing such a document," he says. Councilwoman Mary Woolridge believes she was intentionally misled when she asked to see the development agreement between Seed Capital and the city. Such an agreement is what ensures a developer will do what they say they'll do with a site — in this case, a site they acquired from the city for $1. When she asked to see the agreement, she was told it was still a draft, so she couldn't see it. Woolridge sees this as a case of well-connected outsiders trying to circumvent the process and disregarding resident needs. "We need to be asking West Louisville, what do you want in West Louisville?" she says. Kunnicke says that disregard for the needs and wants of the neighborhood is rooted in classism, because West Louisville residents tend to have lower incomes than some other communities. "Unfortunately we live in a society where we think that folks that have more wealth have more power, they have more knowledge, they have a greater right to shape their environments," she says. "These are cultural things that we have to address. We have to recognize them, call them out, and address them directly." We appreciate them sharing their point of view this week (although we may have learned more than we wanted to know about the shady inner workings of Metro government!). We'll keep you posted on further developments regarding the future of the Food Port and how it will affect the surrounding neighborhood. In this week's Juicy Fruit, one of our favorites, Janelle Monáe, has just been cast in a movie called "Hidden Figures," about three African-American women who worked at NASA in the 1960s, on the mission that made John Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth. The cast also includes Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer, and the movie is due out in September.

Earlier this week, we spoke with Shiya Nwanguma about her experience protesting at the Donald Trump rally and being pushed by Trump supporters — an incident that was captured on a video which quickly went viral. On this week's show, we speak with three more activists who protested both outside and inside the rally. Chanelle Helm attended with the group Bereans for Mike Brown. She says Trump encouraged the crowd to remove protesters by repeatedly saying, "Get them out of here." Henry Brousseau says he was punched in the stomach by a woman wearing a Traditionalist Workers Party t-shirt (the Traditionalist Workers Party has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center). "I've never seen such mob violence," Brousseau said. Molly Shah was with us last week to talk about her reproductive rights hashtag #AskBevinAboutMyVag, and she also attended the Trump rally and tried to document the confrontations. Shah says she's been going to rallies and protests for about 20 years, including Ku Klux Klan rallies. "I have never been that scared. I have never seen anything like that," she said. "It was incredibly violent and incredibly scary." Shah also says she saw a man she later identified as Matthew Heimbach, who is listed as a white nationalist with the Southern Poverty Law Center. "He worked the crowd for easily three hours," she said, "going individually person to person mainly young white men and recruiting them." She recognized him when she saw him later on the viral video of Shiya Nwanguma.

Multiple protesters at the rally on Tuesday in Louisville for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump allege they were pushed by other rally attendees, and some have begun filing police complaints over the incidents. One particular incident from the Trump rally, caught on video by WLKY, has gotten widespread attention from a national audience. The video shows an African-American woman being pushed and yelled at by several men on the floor of the Kentucky International Convention Center. Shiya Nwanguma is the woman at the center of the video. Nwanguma, a 21-year-old University of Louisville student majoring in public health, joined us today for a special episode of Strange Fruit. We talked about why she attended the rally, and how the events unfolded. Nwanguma said she went to protest at the rally alone. “I felt like if I had a lot of people with me, it might have caused a lot of ruckus and a lot of trouble,” she said. “And while I did want to take a stand, I was mainly concerned about going there to take a stand to show Donald Trump himself. I didn’t want to antagonize his supporters whatsoever.” She said she slowly made her way to the front of the crowd, then held up two signs that had Trump’s face Photoshopped onto a pig’s body. “That’s not nice. I know it’s not nice. I know it’s not a positive thing,” she said. “But I thought it was harmless.” Trump Supporters, Protesters Sound Off In Louisville Nwanguma said people were already trying to take the signs from her hands when Trump saw her from the podium and told the crowd to get her out. “And then that’s when everybody started to attack me,” she said. By the time the video starts, she’s been pushed nearly to the back of the room, she said. She said the men seen pushing her on the video hadn’t seen her signs and didn’t know why she was being ejected. Nwanguma said she has an attorney and they haven’t yet decided whether to file charges against the people who pushed her. There were some pretty awful things said. I was called the N-word. I was called the C-word,” she said. Louisville Metro Police said they would investigate any complaints from protesters regarding incidents during the rally. Commonwealth’s Attorney Tom Wine said his office would bring to a grand jury any felony charges filed relating to the Trump rally incidents.

Garth Greenwell got out of Louisville as soon as he could, at age 16. "I really felt like this place was killing me," he says. His family didn't accept his gay identity, and few other adults took took any interest in supporting him — with the life-changing exception of his high school choir teacher, whom he credits with saving his life. "David Brown at the Youth Performing Arts School was the first adult in my life to suggest my life had value," he explains. Greenwell's path took him from performing arts to poetry, and now to prose. His first novel, "What Belongs to You," was published last month, and has been met with almost universal praise from critics, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and Publishers Weekly. "What Belongs to You," which Greenwell says is largely autobiographical, is about the relationship between an American teacher in Bulgaria, and a hustler he meets in a public men's room. It's a scenario not unfamiliar to many gay men, but it's one that no one seems to want to talk about: anonymous sex in semi-public places. Greenwell says it was important to him to imbue dignity into a setting that often gets sanitized when LGBT stories are told. "Those places which have been so despised by both straight and queer authorities are places of extraordinary human richness," he explains. "I don't want to romanticize these places, but they are places where I've experienced intimacy as great as any intimacy I've known in my life. I think they deserve that value and that dignity that art bestows." We loved our conversation with Garth and the way his novel finds the beauty in authentic gay narratives that haven't been toned down for a mainstream straight audience (unlike many queer couples on tv, for example, who seem stripped of all sexuality to make them more palatable in prime time). Garth Greenwell recently came back to his hometown to read from the book. While he was here, he stopped by to talk with us about his work, his life, and what it was like to come home. "I expected the bad feelings, the hard feelings," he said. "But I didn't expect all the wonderful feelings." In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we meet Molly Shah, the reproductive rights activist behind the hashtag #AskBevinAboutMyVag. Shah gives us the rundown of how Governor Matt Bevin's proposed abortion restrictions seem more interested in controlling women's bodies than meeting their medical needs. Shah says the measures — like requiring women to consult with a doctor 24 hours in advance of an abortion, and have a transvaginal ultrasound even if it's not medically necessary — are counterproductive. "If you don't respect women and their healthcare, then they make poor healthcare decisions in the future, which leads to the need for more abortions," she says.

The neighborhood spoke loud and clear in opposition to the proposed biodigester project in West Louisville. Now, a food port is proposed for 30th and Market Streets. This week, we talk to two of the people working on making the West Louisville Food Port a reality: oSha Shireman and Charles Booker. They say the project will bring farmers, educators, retailers and more together on one 24-acre campus. "The food port is essentially a business park for food," Booker explains. "Any food-related business can come set up their shop." He says there will also be an arts & culture aspect to the project and food port visitors can expect to find anything from cooking classes to musical performances. In our Juicy Fruit segment, we recap the Grammy Awards, and pay tribute to Vanity, Prince's former protege, who passed away this week.

At first glance, Dr. Yaba Blay saw a lot to love about the song Formation and accompanying video. Then she got to the part that says, "You mix that negro with that Creole, make a Texas bama." Dr. Blay says talking about those two identities as separate groups reflects a longtime tendency of Creole people to see darker-skinned black people as less than. "The history of New Orleans is a history of colorism," she explains. "It is a history of oppression based not just on skin color, but on gradation of skin color." Blay points to the scene where Blue Ivy is dancing with two other, darker-complected girls. Blue Ivy wears what looks like a contemporary sundress, while the other girls are dressed in Victorian-looking outfits suitable for much older people. The scene might not have stuck out to viewers who didn't grow up in New Orleans, but Blay says in that community, skin color is more nuanced. "While the rest of the country was rocking with the one-drop rule, in New Orleans, literally every single drop made you something else," she says. Dr. Blay joins us this week, along with another New Orleans native, Shantrelle Lewis, who wrote an article for Slate about the ways in which Katrina imagery and New Orleans bounce music is exploited in the "Formation" song and video. And to wrap up the show, we check in with Professor Kevin Allred, who created the class Politicizing Beyoncé at Rutgers University. We asked Allred to help us unpack some of the backlash against the song and Super Bowl performance - especially from white second-wave feminists.