Ellen Schrecker, the leading historian of the McCarthy era's widespread purge of the U.S. Teachers and professors who violate these gag orders can be subject to fines, loss of state funding for their institutions, termination and even criminal charges. PEN America reports that proposed educational gag orders have increased 250 percent compared with those issued in 2021. The backlash against critical race theory (CRT), explorations of LGBTQ+ identities and the banning of books by historians such as Howard Zinn and writers such as Toni Morrison, are extensions of this attempt to deny the oppressed their song. The poor, especially poor people of color, remain rigidly segregated within educational systems. Ukraine, media censorship and the ruthless politics of permanent war It was a criminal offense to teach enslaved people to read and write. Black illiteracy was essential to white domination of the South. This denial of one's song is instrumental to bondage. And your song, Walker tells him, is what the white ruling class seeks to eradicate. It is your song, your voice, your history, Walker tells him, which gives you your identity and your freedom. At a boarding house, he meets a conjuror named Bynum Walker, who tells him that in order to face and overcome the demons that torment him, he must find his song. In Wilson's play, Herald Loomis, a convict who worked on Turner's farm, arrives in Pittsburgh after seven years of bondage with his 11-year-old daughter, Zonia, in search of his wife.
The prisoners he leased to the farmers worked for years in a system of convict leasing - slavery by another name. While en route, he handed over some of the convicts, for a commission, to white farmers. Joe Turney transported Black prisoners, chained in a coffle, along the roads from Memphis to the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. That song refers to a man named Joe Turney, the brother of Peter Turney, who was the governor of Tennessee from 1893 to 1897. The play's title comes from "Joe Turner's Blues," written in 1915 by W.C. His favorite, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," is set in 1911 in a boarding house in Pittsburgh's Hill District. Used by permission.Īugust Wilson wrote 10 plays chronicling Black life in the 20th century. This article originally appeared at ScheerPost.
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