Our Earnest Struggle: Recent Episodes
WXIR
A podcast dedicated to celebrating the living legacy of Frederick Douglass. Features critical commentary from artists, activists, and scholars in Rochester, NY and beyond.
Produced by Darien Lamen for Rochester Community Media and WXIR 100.9 LPFM
The parts of our shared history we choose to forget say at least as much about us as the parts we choose to memorialize.
Rochester, New York is home to the first civic monument ever erected to honor an African American: the 1899 statue of Frederick Douglass. The famed abolitionist called Rochester home for 25 years.
But beneath the surface of the oft-repeated story lie hidden histories... of the hotel waiter who made the monument a reality; of the racism Douglass's family endured in Rochester; and of the racial justice struggle Rochester abandoned.
The past is a battleground, and what we choose to forget or remember shapes our future.
Featuring commentary by Carvin Eison, Richard Newman, Andrew Williams, Olivia Kim, Shane Wiegand
Produced by Darien Lamen for Rochester Community Media Center and WXIR 100.9FM
Image: Darien Lamen
In the words of Rosetta Douglass, "The told story of Frederick Douglass is the untold story of the family."
In this episode, we reconstruct some of the untold stories of Frederick and Anna's five children with help from Celeste-Marie Bernier. She's a professor at the University of Edinburgh and author of the new book If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection. Bernier talks about Rosetta's lost feminist history of the abolition movement; Lewis Henry's letters from the frontlines of the Civil War; little Annie's recollections of John Brown; and much more.
We also speak with Walter O. Evans, the private collector of African American art and literature whose archive forms the basis for Bernier's new book. We'll find out how growing up in the segregated South influenced his thinking about preserving African American culture.
Produced by Darien Lamen for Rochester Community Media Center and WXIR 100.9FM
Image: Darien Lamen
Frederick Douglass is often described as a self-made man. Yet his life was profoundly shaped by the women around him--both those who helped and loved him, and those who used and opposed him. Our guests introduce us to some of them, and discuss the challenges of recovering their stories.
Professor Leigh Fought (LeMoyne College) is author of Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (2017). She paints an intimate portrait of Douglass’s wife, Anna; searches the record for his grandmother, Betsey; demystifies his relationship with “fr'enemy” Susan B. Anthony; and explains how Ida B. Wells rekindled his activist fire.
Annette Daniels Taylor, a Buffalo-based poet and performer with Young Audiences of Western New York, talks about the art of conjuring the past. She discusses her soundwalk through the Douglasses’ Rochester and brings Anna Douglass and neighbor Jenny Marsh Parker to life.
Produced by Darien Lamen for Rochester Community Media Center and WXIR 100.9 FM
Image: "Anna Murray Douglass" mural by Shawn Dunwoody, School 12, Rochester, NY
The word "freedom" gets thrown around a lot in the United States... and often in the service of a weaponized nationalism (remember Freedom Fries?). But as Neil Roberts argues, freedom resides not in any particular country, but in the actual process of struggling to get free of "the funk" we're all born into.
Neil Roberts is a professor of Africana Studies at Williams College. He's the author of Freedom as Marronage (2015) and the editor of A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass (2018).
In this wide-ranging episode, Roberts shows us how African American thought and popular culture provide ample resources for reimagining freedom... whether through runaways, freedom fighters, or Black Panthers.
Produced by Darien Lamen for Rochester Community Media Center and WXIR 100.9 FM
Image: Darien Lamen
In this episode, we search the historical record for traces of Frederick Douglass the musician. How did he learn to play the violin while still a fugitive? Why would popular songs associated with blackface minstrelsy have been among his favorites?
We talk with Jennie Lightweis-Goff, an Instructor at the University of Mississippi, about Douglass and the long history of cultural appropriation, from Stephen Foster to Miley Cyrus.
And we talk with Paul Burgett, a violinist and professor at the Eastman School of Music, about the role of the violin as an instrument of social mobility. He shares his experience of racial profiling in segregated St. Louis, and talks about his own path to the Vice Presidency of the University of Rochester.
Produced by Darien Lamen for Rochester Community Media Center and WXIR 100.9 FM
Image: Darien Lamen
Where would Frederick Douglass stand on today's struggle for immigrant rights? How would the former fugitive from slavery relate to the people without papers who make our restaurants, dairies, and country run today?
This episode takes a close look at the "Hemispheric Douglass" and his thinking on Latin America and migration.
We speak with Brown University Professor Juliet Hooker about Douglass's stance on African American emigration to Central America; US relations with Haiti and the Caribbean; and his defense of migration as a universal human right.
We hear from NYC Councilmember Jumaane Williams on activism, electoral politics, and the fight for immigrant rights downstate.
And we speak with Carly Fox at the Worker Justice Center about the challenges facing undocumented workers in rural New York.
Produced by Darien Lamen for Rochester Community Media Center and WXIR 100.9 FM
Image: Darien Lamen