Langston Hughes in Chapel Hill (pt.2 "Christ in Alabama")

CQ Speaks

Colin Dekeersgieter sits down with poet and scholar Emilio Taiveaho Peláez for the second part of their discussion on Langston Hughes's visit to Chapel Hill and his publications in Contempo: A Review of Books and Personalities. "Under discussion here is Langston Hughes’s 1931 poem 'Christ in Alabama' & listenin’ through this conversation it’s clear that it was a different (and sadly the same) world when this was recorded. Colin & I sat down on May 16 to have this discussion, nine days before the (yet again) public, viral homicide of George Floyd — the hip hop artist Big Floyd — at the hands of the police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The case of the Scottsboro Boys (discussed in this two-part podcast), the history and legacies of lynching, and police brutality as a public performance of whiteness, are not unrelated... This podcast, a conversation about systemic racism, poetry, music, and collective identity, attempts to unpack and reckon with a history of institutional hatred and the dehumanization of Black Life, topics that are important for White Audiences to confront—now more than ever. 'If you know your history / Then you would know where you coming from.' Black Stories Matter, Black Lives Matter." — Emilio Taiveaho Peláez