Lecture: Farah Jasmine Griffin-- “The Idea of Ancestry: Tradition, Innovation, and Black Freedom Dreams”

Columbia University Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin offers the keynote address “The Idea of Ancestry: Tradition, Innovation, and Black Freedom Dreams” at the Resisting Arrest: Black Artfulness and Survival: A One Day Symposium on Art and Resistance hosted by the Department of African + African American Studies at Duke University. In the talk Professor Griffin uses Etheridge Knight's poem, "The Idea of Ancestry" as  an opening for this rumination on the life giving force of Black creativity. How does tradition nourish and limit our sense of collective possibility? How do innovative, creative, and visionary artists, intellectuals and organizers use the past to forward a new world?