#BackChannel -- Seats at The Table: Nat Turner + '13th' + Luke Cage + Solange

The highly-anticipated film The Birth of a Nation tells the story of a slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831. The movie received critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, but support for the movie has since waned as details about the creator’s controversial past resurfaced.

Meanwhile, streaming services, like Netflix, continue to provide a platform for content portraying diverse representations of black life. The new documentary "13th" looks at the birth of mass incarceration in the U.S. and the drama Luke Cage depicts a bulletproof black superhero. This as Solange Knowles' A Seat at the Table offers a refined collection of sounds geared to this historical moment.

WUNC Host Frank Stasio talks with Natalie Bullock Brown, professor of film and broadcast media at St. Augustine's University in Raleigh, and Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African & African American studies at Duke University in Durham on this edition of #BackChannel.