Lead Belly, Lee Hays, and the hammer songs that powered the folk movement.
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Nell Battle Lewis, Storyteller for Jim Crow
How an otherwise high-minded social reformer preserved and perpetuated her white supremacist worldview.
A History of American Protest Music: ‘We Have Got Tools and We Are Going to Succeed’
Lead Belly, Lee Hays, and the hammer songs that powered the folk movement.
A History of American Protest Music: How The Hutchinson Family Singers Achieved Pop Stardom with an Anti-Slavery Anthem
“Get Off the Track!” borrowed the melody of a racist hit song and helped give a public voice to the abolitionist movement.
More Than a Riot Going On: A ‘Detroit’-Inspired Reading List
The failures of Kathryn Bigelow’s film undercut the fullness, complexity, and beauty of Detroit.
How Temple of the Dog Pioneered a New Genre of Music Videos in the ’90s
Fronted by Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell, Temple of the Dog was the original rock supergroup. Their music video “Hunger Strike” helped launch a musical movement.
Tuesdays with Zinsser
Mark Singer remembers his former teacher, On Writing Well author William Zinsser, who died May 12.
What Happens When Your Writing Professor Is William Zinsser
The weekly writing assignments—thousand-word limit, a safeguard for Bill’s sanity—required us to try our hands at a wide range of forms: humor, interviewing, travel, science, sports, criticism, editorials. This regimen inevitably yielded the occasional face-first failure, soon to be transmuted by pedagogical alchemy into an edifying failure. At the end of class, Bill would return […]
Is the Internet Changing Time?
“Fragments of the past are for the first time on tap, not stored away in boxes,” writes Laurence Scott.
The Story of ‘Ella and Louis,’ 60 Years Later
A century-defining album’s improbable genesis.
