Left of Black S2:E14 | Behind the Veil of Lynching and Jim Crow

Left of Black S2:E14 Behind the Veil of Lynching and JimCrow
w/Professor Leslie Brown and Professor Koritha Mitchell December 12, 2011

Left of Blackhost and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype©by Koritha Mitchell, Professor ofEnglish at The Ohio State University and author of Living withLynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship1890-1930 (University of IllinoisPress).  Neal and Mitchell discuss how black playwrights during the early20th century used one-act plays to offer response to racial traumaand violence.  Neal and Mitchell also contemplate why black artists areoften misunderstood in their intent, where their art is often labeled "protestart" when it instead functions as a form of community expression. Lastly, Mitchell analyzes the first generation of black cross-over stars anddistinguishes between Tyler Perry the stage performer and the filmmaker.  

Later Neal is joined via Skype©by Leslie Brown, Associate Professorof History at Williams College and aresearcher on the project Behind theVeil: Documenting the African-American Experience in the Jim Crow South which has been recently digitized at Duke University. Brown discusses the ethnographic research she did to prepare for the archiveand the remaining accessibility gap to materials such as these.  Brownalso discusses the recent interest in the Jim Crow era and what lack ofknowledge of that era says about American democracy.
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Left ofBlack is a weekly Webcast hosted byMark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at DukeUniversity.
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