OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile

One of the most fabled recording sessions in US history occurred on November 23, 1936, in the Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, where bluesman Robert Johnson cut his first sides for the American Record Corporation. Although he enjoyed little commercial success during his lifetime, Johnson, since the 1960s blues revival, has become the most revered of all bluesmen: an iconic figure whose life and art seem to embody black resistance to Jim Crow. Near the heart of many celebrations of Johnson’s significance is the story that in San Antonio he chose to play while facing a wall—a gesture that has been interpreted variously as an act of proud racial defiance directed towards the white record company officials in attendance, as an attempt to alter the acoustics of the recording, and as a way for Johnson to hide his best guitar licks from prying eyes. This lecture revisits the historic circumstances of Johnson’s recording debut and considers what is at stake for our understanding of the Jim Crow South in the fiery debates about which direction he was facing.

This lecture considers the special relationship the Beatles had with the US South, from even before their first visit to the region in 1964, through their career as the biggest musical act on the planet, to their post-Beatles solo careers. That relationship has much to reveal about the changing nature of the region in the 1960s, but also about how the U.S. South has been understood and misunderstood by those living far beyond its borders.

This lecture looks at three very different southern operas, composed by three very different artists, in three very different historical moments to think about what, if anything, defines 'southern music' and how we might use it to interrogate important aspects of southern and U.S. history.

This lecture explores the role of radio in the modern African American freedom struggle, making the case that without recognizing its vital role in mobilizing grassroots activists, our understanding of the southern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s is incomplete.