Strange Fruit

Poet and activist Lance Newman joins us for Juicy Fruit this week, where some stories from this week lead to a broader discussion of violence against black Americans. We talk about the through line of retribution against African-Americans who are perceived as not knowing their place. Emmett Till, Malcolm X's father Earl Little, lynchings, the massacre in Rosewood, Florida--all were incidents of white supremacist violence that went well beyond just murder. (We do describe the details of some of those killings on the show this week, so if you can't listen to that, you'll want to skip from minute 7 to minute 17 of the show.) The over-the-top nature of how the murders were carried out and what was done to the bodies was intended to terrorize other black people and let them know they could be next. Dr. Story draws a comparison between historical violence to today's police shootings to point out that the need for a Black Lives Matter movement goes far beyond just the events of the past few years. And our colleague