30 Days of 'Left of Black': Joshua Bennett

30 Days of 'Left of Black': Joshua Bennett

One of the best things about an institution like Duke University is the number of  “major figures”—to riff off of James Braxton Peterson—who come through on a regular basis.  As you will see during the course of 30 Days of Left of Black, we’ve been fortunate to get many folks to spend some time with us in our studios in the John Hope Franklin Center.  Josh Bennett with William 'Sandy' Darity and Mark Anthony NealWhen Joshua Bennettcame to visit in September of 2010, it was our first opportunity to have a live performance on the show.   Joshua had been burning up the Spoken Word circuit as Brave New Voices champion, performing at the White House, and then there was the viral response to his piece “10 Things I Want to Say to a Black Woman.”  My best friend Franklin Paul, Jr. and I, have often joked that Joshua—wearing his “thing” t-shirt—was the kind of dude we’d hope our daughters would end up with—if they were inclined. I was unaware of this Joshua when I first met him in the Fall of 2008 at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was a visiting scholar for the semester.  Joshua was one of four undergraduates in a graduate seminar that I taught called (Il)Legible Blackness, and easily established himself as one of the sharpest minds in a class that included current Northwestern Professor C. Riley Snorton and Dr. Khadijah White.
When Joshua visited the Left of Black studios, he was months away from beginning his Marshall Scholarship and a year away from beginning his doctoral work at Princeton University. Three years later this episode is still one of my favorites.