Tag Archives: slavery

Late last month in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the police shooting of a Black man named Jacob Blake set off riots and looting in a city just a little smaller than Bloomington, Indiana. Three months prior, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin prompted a string of riots and looting that resonated throughout the country, from Portland to …

We open with the first movement of Beethoven’s “Tempest,” or Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, composed in 1802, performed here by Glen Gould on March 19, 1967 on the television program “Music For a Sunday Afternoon.” We read ourselves in Shakespeare’s Tempest – not only can we chart our sociological course by surveying productions of the play, but …

This episode originally aired on January 8, 2019. In November 2016 today’s guest, Bruce Laurie, published an essay called ‘”Chaotic Freedom” in Civil War Louisiana: The Origins of an Iconic Image.’ This image is of a badly abused enslaved man called variously “A Typical Negro,” “The Scourged Back,” “Gordon the Slave,” or “Poor Peter,” who is turned away showing his …

Hosts Clarence Boone and Roberta Radovich pay homage to the legacy of Toni Morrison with guests Drs. John and Audrey McCluskey, who are respected academicians, writers, researchers and former acquaintances with Ms. Morrison. Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher, and professor emeritus at Princeton University. She was noted for her examination of the black experience, especially from …

In the liner notes to the album Pithecanthropus Erectus, Charles Mingus calls the title song “his conception of the modern counterpart of the first man to stand erect – how proud he was, considering himself the “first” to ascend from all fours, pounding his chest and preaching his superiority over the animals still in a prone position. Overcome with self-esteem, …

This week, we have a conversation between Toussaint Losier and Micol Seigel. This is part one of a series in which we hear Losier, author of Rethinking the American Prison Movement, speak to Seigel about his research while writing his book, in which he builds a cohesive picture of the long history of resistance to slavery and incarceration.  In this …

Today’s show seeks to strike through the mask of the normative history of so-called progress as it’s been written and taught to children. A tale told in which the struggles of the workers of the USA are nearly disappeared. The working class not only toils for the profit of the owning class, it has to overcome continual depredation and great …

We open with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” performed by Odetta off of the 1959 album My Eyes Have Seen. The “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” also known as “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,” is a lyric by the American writer Julia Ward Howe using the music from the song “John Brown’s Body.” The final stanza includes the …

Our opening song is “I’ve Grown So Ugly” by Robert Pete Williams, who was imprisoned in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in the mid 1950s. The rest of our music is by women prisoners and will come from field recordings taken in the 1930s and 40s from such plantation prisons as Parchman in Mississippi and Angola in Louisiana. In 1935, Parchman …

In this episode of the Bicentennial Journal, IU historian John Summerlot, talks about Indiana University during the mid 1800s and during the Civil War era. The Bicentennial Journal—looking back on 200 years of history in South Central Indiana. Support for The Bicentennial Journal and WFHB comes from Monroe County and Visit Bloomington. More information about Monroe County’s Bicentennial is available on …