In this conversation between Dr. Chris McAuley, Black Studies Collection Editor at Lived Places Publishing and Dr. Gregory Freeland, author of Music and Black Community in Segregated North Carolina, they discussed the pivotal role that music played in keeping a community together during one of the most legally segregated times in U.S. history. 

If the video doesn’t load, please click here to view it: https://cassyni.com/events/WU9Cm2sUuTCcAii4yWpnso 

Panelists:

• Gregory Freeland, Professor of Political Science at California Lutheran University
• Chris McAuley, UC Santa Barbara and Black Studies Collection Editor at Lived Places Publishing Session

The discussion centered around Dr. Freeland’s recently published memoir, Music and Black Community in Segregated North Carolina, which details the scenes and sounds of his youth in Black Durham of the 1950s and early 1960s. Southern Black people survived racially motivated attacks, imprisonments, appropriations, enslavement, and exploitation all the while continuing to struggle and survive those injustices. Through the lens of Dr. Freeland's experiences, he found that music was vital to community togetherness and spiritual well-being and that music brought the community into positive spaces that fostered survival, both intentionally, through activism, and naturally, through the effect of music’s all-encompassing uniting presence.

The session took place on June 21, 2023 and was recorded live. 

• To view the comments and Q&A, please see the event page
• For future sessions in the series: https://cassyni.com/s/black-studies
• Dr. McAuley's Black Studies Collection: https://livedplacespublishing.com/page/black-studies

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Please send questions or inquiries to Michael Boezi at michael [at] lived places publsihing [dot] com