Left of Black S2:E14

Behind the Veil of Lynching and Jim Crow

w/ Professor Leslie Brown and Professor Koritha Mitchell 

December 12, 2011 

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype© by Koritha Mitchell, Professor of English at The Ohio State University and author of Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship 1890-1930 (University of Illinois Press).  Neal and Mitchell discuss how black playwrights during the early 20^th century used one-act plays to offer response to racial trauma and violence.  Neal and Mitchell also contemplate why black artists are often misunderstood in their intent, where their art is often labeled “protest art” when it instead functions as a form of community expression.   Lastly, Mitchell analyzes the first generation of black cross-over stars and distinguishes between Tyler Perry the stage performer and the filmmaker.   

Later Neal is joined via Skype© by Leslie Brown, Associate Professor of History at Williams College and a researcher on the project Behind the Veil: 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 archive and the remaining accessibility gap to materials such as these.  Brown also discusses the recent interest in the Jim Crow era and what lack of knowledge of that era says about American democracy.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for download @ iTunes U