Say It Loud traces the last 50 years of black history through stirring, historically important speeches by African Americans from across the political spectrum. The documentary illuminates tidal changes in African American political power and questions of black identity through the speeches of deeply influential black Americans. With recordings unearthed from libraries and sound archives, and made widely available here for the first time, Say It Loud includes landmark speeches by Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr., James Cone, Toni Morrison, Colin Powell, and many others.

Bringing the rich immediacy of the spoken word to a vital historical and intellectual tradition, Say It Loud reveals the diversity of ideas and arguments pulsing through the black freedom movement. Say it Loud is a sequel to the American RadioWorks documentary, Say it Plain. A companion book and CD set, Say It Loud: Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African American Identity, is now available from The New Press.

Memorialized in a Bob Dylan song and an Academy Award nominated Denzel Washington film, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was a successful prize fighter, who was falsely accused of murder. After nearly two decades in prison, Carter was exonerated by a federal judge (also heard in our documentary) in a ruling later affirmed by the US Supreme Court. Now in his 70s and an outspoken advocate for others wrongly convicted, Carter recently published a spiritual memoir on how he emerged not only from physical incarceration, but from the emotional prison of hatred and bitterness.

The Watts Towers Project is Roger Guenveur Smith’s spellbinding memory play on the building of the Los Angeles landmark. And in Radio Mambo, the performance group Culture Clash offers a mix of vignettes on urban renewal, hurricanes… and drag queens.

On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In it, he announced that all slaves in the rebellious states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Today, Lincoln is remembered as “The Great Emancipator,” but the story of emancipation is complex and contradictory. And the question of how we choose to commemorate this anniversary can be touchy.

In this episode, the History Guys trace the shifting meanings of the Emancipation Proclamation, from 1863 to the Civil War’s centennial to the present. How should we best understand emancipation—as a moral imperative, military necessity, political strategy, or all of the above? 

Guests Include:

• David Blight - historian, Yale University
• Ta-Nehisi Coates - senior editor, The Atlantic
• Christy Coleman - President, the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar
• Kirk Savage, art & architecture historian, University of Pittsburgh
• Michael Vorenberg - historian, Brown University

Wynton Marsalis marks 25 years at the helm of Jazz at Lincoln Center during the 2012-13 Season. To celebrate this milestone, Marsalis sat down with Elliott Forrest, the Peabody Award-winning radio host and producer of WQXR and WNYC.

In this rare long-form intimate conversation, they talk about the early days of JALC, how the trumpet found Marsalis, the very different roles his parents played in his life, the history of Jazz, music education and, in a one-of-a-kind demonstration, Marsalis recreates the playing styles of other trumpeters, including Clark Terry, Miles Davis and others.

The event from which this radio special was created was held on June 5, 2012 in The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, for a live web and studio audience and included two performances by Marsalis with members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra playing “Comes Love (Nothing Can Be Done)” and “Free To Be."

The Musicians:    Wynton Marsalis, trumpet; Walter Blanding, saxophone; Dan Nimmer, piano; Carlos Henriquez, bass; Willie Jones, III, drums

First produced by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1969, this masterpiece by Academy Award® nominee Lonne Elder III gives us the portrait of a Harlem family that dreams of a better life, but pursues it in tragic ways.  Ceremonies in Dark Old Men opened the door for new generation of African American playwrights, August Wilson among them. Starring Charlie Robinson, Glynn Turman, and Rocky Carroll.

Award-winning NPR Reporter Nancy Solomon takes you inside a school to hear a discussion on race in the classroom.  Listen as students try to explain what went wrong with their education. Join her at the kitchen table with black middle-class parents who thought that a move to the suburbs would ensure school success. Find out how the school's best teachers motivate their students. Be a fly on the wall in the busy dean's office where where kids with discipline problems land.

Two versions are available. The 54-minute version has a music-filled news hole and one-minute music breaks at :19 and :39 for station cutaways. The 59-minute version has additional content to cover the news hole (not music), and the same station breaks at :19 and 39.  The promos have 6-sec music tails for station tag.

A digital media package is available free to all stations that includes a call to action, audio slideshows and links for more information. To preview or to link to: www.nancycsolomon.com

Funded by the Spencer Fellowship in Education Reporting and free to all stations.

On a 10-week tour of 16 national parks in 1995, Frank and Audrey Peterman were awed by the beauty of America and warmed by the friendliness of fellow campers. But among all of the park tourists, the Petermans saw only two fellow African-Americans.

After discovering that many blacks felt no connection with the parks, the Petermans took action: they started a program called “Keeping It Wild,” aimed at encouraging black Americans to visit the nation’s parks and other public lands that they help pay for with tax dollars. As Frank notes, “If you are not involving the communities who will make up a larger percentage of the voting population in the future, how do you then expect them to make decisions that will protect these places for posterity?”

Host Majora Carter joins the Petermans and a group of teens from inner-city Houston as they crawl through a wondrous 100-foot cave in Yosemite. And we meet Shelton Johnson, Yosemite’s only black park ranger, who is quick to point out that less than 1 percent of the park’s visitors are African-American — a statistic that’s bound to change if Frank and Audrey Peterman have their way.

Langston Hughes, an enduring icon of the Harlem Renaissance, is best-known for his written work, which wedded his fierce dedication to social justice with his belief in the transformative power of the word. But he was a music lover, too, and some of the works he was most proud of were collaborations with composers and musicians.

On Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 9 pm - what would have been Hughes’ 110th birthday - WQXR kicks off Black History Month with the premiere of I, Too, Sing America: Music In The Life Of Langston Hughes, a one-hour radio special that shines a light on Hughes's lesser-known musical compositions.

Hosted by Terrance McKnight, WQXR host and former Morehouse professor of music, I, Too, Sing America will dive into the songs, cantatas, musicals and librettos that flowed from Hughes’ pen. As he did with his poetry, Hughes used music to denounce war, combat segregation and restore human dignity in the face of Jim Crow. His musical adventures included writing lyrics for stage pieces such as Black Nativity and Tambourines to Glory, works that helped give birth to the genre of Gospel Play, as well as songs for radio plays and political campaigns, and the libretto for Kurt Weill’s Street Songs.

I, Too, Sing America will also tell the dramatic tale of Hughes’ collaboration with William Grant Still, hailed today as “the Dean of African American composers.” For 15 years, against the backdrop of pre-Civil Rights racism, the two fought to see their opera become a reality. Their historic success came in 1949, when Troubled Island – which told the story of Haitian revolution leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines – was staged by the New York City Opera, becoming the first opera by African Americans to ever be staged by a major company.

The documentary will include recordings of select pieces of Hughes’ musical works, some of which were never performed again in their entirety after their original production. It will also feature archival interview tape of William Grant Still discussing Troubled Island.

This music-rich hour-long special introduces listeners to the stories and sounds of four older Southern bluesmen—and to the efforts of Tim Duffy, founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, to help lift these musicians from poverty and obscurity. The musicians cover a wide swath of the South: Boo Hanks from Virgilina, Va.; Captain Luke from Winston-Salem, N.C.; Eddie Tigner from Atlanta; and Little Freddie King from New Orleans.

In their own words and performances, these men bring us the story of a music, an era and a culture that are uniquely American. The program is co-produced and co-written by Richard Ziglar and Barry Yeoman, who traveled around the South collecting interviews and field recordings of the musicians. Yeoman, who co-produced our Gracie Award-winning program "Picking Up the Pieces," narrates.

AARP's Web site will feature a multimedia package—complete with videos, an audio slideshow, and links for listeners who want to purchase CDs—at http://www.aarp.org/radio.

SLY & THE FAMILY STONE: FAMILY AFFAIR. One-hour music intensive radio documentary about Sly & the Family Stone, their music, their turbulent history, and the indelible marks they left behind. Seven musicians walked on the stage, some were black, some white, some were men, some women, and all of them were dressed in bright, colorful outfits.

That was Sly and the Family Stone, and for seven wild years (1967-1974), they left a mark on music and culture that continues to inspire countless musicians - both black and white. Members changed, times got rough, but Sly and the Family Stone's sound and message of love and unity still speaks to the world today.

FAMILY AFFAIR is hosted by Ben Fong-Torres, and includes a wide range of Sly & the Family Stone tracks - from the big hits ("Dance to the Music," Everyday People," and others) to deep cuts from all their albums. Some songs accentuate the points made by the many interview subjects, others speak for themselves. All of them stand up as examples of Sly Stone's "watershed point in the development of rhythm and blues," as detailed by biographer and journalist Joel Selvin.

Band members Rose Stone, Larry Graham, Greg Errico and Andy Newmark provide rarely-heard, first-hand accounts of the zeniths and nadirs of Sly Stone's universe, taking us from their family roots to their mainstream success to later sessions "surrounded by really crazy people...out there in the twilight zone."

Musicians Isaac Hayes and Chuck D, however, break down how music from all those episodes influenced Sly's contemporaries as well as future generations of musicians.

Host: Ben Fong-Torres. Producer: Paul Chuffo & Joshua Jackson, Joyride Media. Terms: Available to all USA-based broadcasters at no cost. Contacts: Eric Molk, 212-833-5389, eric.molk@sonybmg.com Andy Cahn, 212-833-6279, andy.cahn@sonybmg.com.

When the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech is broadcast each February to mark Black History Month, the magnetic cadence of his words is almost impossible to resist. King was a remarkable orator, but he was hardly alone. He was nurtured in a centuries-old African American tradition of spoken narrative and oral persuasion. Like black speakers before and after him, King testified to how America betrayed its founding ideals through slavery, segregation and racial bigotry. King and scores of other black orators sounded the charge against Jim Crow and stung the moral conscience of America. Many powered their messages with relentless optimism that one day change would come. They reminded Americans of how good they could be. Others offered a different version of utopia: a separate nation free of whites. This dramatic and moving program highlights a selection of landmark sermons, speeches and broadcasts by African American orators over the past century. From Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, to Fannie Lou Hamer and Malcolm X, to Shirley Chisholm and Julian Bond, listeners will hear the stirring words of African American figures as they call for action on civil rights and the unmet promise of democracy. Say it Plain will give listeners a vivid audio portrait of black Americans exhorting the nation to make good on its democratic principles and, in so doing, actually changing the country.

We know Langston Hughes as a celebrated African-American author of poems, essays, stories, memoirs and more.  But Hughes also wrote songs-hundreds of them.  Music was at the heart of his work, with jazz and blues informing the cadences, structures, and subject matter of many of his poems.  In an early essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," he touted jazz and blues as a valid and vital expression of African-American identity in art; he was one of the few literary figures in the Harlem Renaissance to do so.

"The Langston Hughes Songbook" features a diverse group of artists performing songs with lyrics written by Hughes.  We'll hear a live version of Nina Simone's 1960s anthem "Backlash Blues," the legendary stride pianist James P. Johnson playing the one period recording from a long-lost "blues opera" that he and Hughes wrote, Johnny Mercer and June Christy offering their takes on Hughes' musical collaborations with famed composer Kurt Weill, Abbey Lincoln's recording of Hughes and jazz pianist Randy Weston's "African Lady," Hughes' own spoken-word encounters with bassist Charles Mingus, and saxophonist-singer Gary Bartz's grooving feel-good adaptation of Hughes' first-ever published poem.

From the 1940s to the 1990s, several jazz composers undertook several large-scale orchestral compositions that portrayed the journey of black people from Africa to enslavement in America, emancipation, and the subsequent difficulties and complexities of life in a racist and segregated country. This program offers music from such extended works by Duke Ellington, Oliver Nelson, John Carter and Wynton Marsalis, as well as commentary from historian Michael McGerr.  Perfect for Black History Month, but usable year-round.

In 1912, the state of Maine evicted a mixed-race community of about forty-five people from Malaga Island, just off the coast of Phippsburg. It was an act of racism, eugenics, and political retribution.

Eight islanders were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded. The rest managed as best they could. The state moved the island school to another island. Then they dug up the graves and reburied the remains in the graveyard at the Maine School.

The Malaga community was erased.

For generations, descendents feared to speak about what happened to their families because of the local stigma of mixed-blood and feeble-mindedness.  Others in Phippsburg would rather forget the incident - a story best left untold, some say.

This is that story.

A genetic disease mostly affecting those of African descent, sickle cell produces debilitating pain and a life sometimes cut short, especially for the undiagnosed. And as a burden largely borne by the underprivileged, sickle cell is not just a medical problem, but a social one. Chasing the Crescent Moon explores the challenges posed by sickle cell through the story of one physician and the lives he has touched. Dr. Kwaku Ohene-Frempong grew from a child of Ghanaian cocoa farmers to become a Yale scholar, an Olympic athlete, and one of the most important international warriors against sickle cell. He also bore a son who suffers from the disease. In his greatest accomplishment, Dr. Frempong established the only city-wide newborn screening for sickle cell in all of West Africa, where 1 in 50 babies suffers from the illness. The documentary relates Dr. Frempong's remarkable journey as well as the dramatic stories of his coworkers, staff, patients and their families. Set in Ghana and Philadelphia, the documentary travels from the high tech Comprehensive Sickle Cell Clinic that Dr. Frempong heads at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to his overcrowded Ghanaian clinic. The stories educate, advocate and entrance, conveying the unusual medical and social burdens faced by those fighting sickle cell. Available free to all stations. The program includes two 59-second breaks (with music beds) at 22:56 and 40:49.

Produced before a live audience at The Museum of Television and Radio (Paley Center for Media) in New York, this original audio docudrama by producer Craig Wichman is the recipient of a National Audio Theatre BEST SCRIPT "GRAND PRIZE." Mr. Wichman plays the 16th President, and Katie Nutt is Mary Todd Lincoln, in a cast that includes John O. Donnell, Emma Palzere, Vito LaBella, Derek Lively, Dan Renkin, Bernadette Fiorella, and John Prave. Directed by Jay Stern (Independent Feature, THE CHANGELING); Music by TONY AWARD-winning Composer Mark Hollmann, with Kathy McDonald and Darren Wilkes; Sound Effects by Sue Zizza and David Shinn (Sue Media); Engineering by Dominick Barbera, with John Kiehl (Soundtrack NY.) And it's all true. ************************************************* "A pleasure... best radio... in some time... subject matter among the most dramatic..." -Arthur Anderson, The Mercury Theatre "A great job... really first rate, just as your last... keep up the wonderful work..." -Leonard Maltin "I suspect that Quicksilver... will be racking up another "Best Production" (Award) for this... splendid radio..." -Max Schmid, WBAI, NY "...Quite fine..." -Andy Trudeau, National Public Radio QUICKSILVER RADIO THEATER has earned awards from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the National Audio Theatre, and has performed by invitation at the Museum of Television and Radio (Paley Center for Media) where its shows are in the Collection.

Over the decades, the relationship between African Americans and Jewish Americans has been a push and pull of common interests and mutual recriminations. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's the Jewish concept of "Tikkun Olam" or Repairing the World was a driving force for young Jewish activists who went to the South to register Black voters and link arms with Black protesters. African Americans embraced these Jews as brothers and sisters from another oppressed group. However, with the rise of Black nationalism at home and increased turmoil in Israel, this hopeful period was followed by an angry break between the two groups, resulting in racism and anti-Semitism. "Can Your Hear Me" follows this saga and then looks at how these two cultures have worked towards reconciliation through a rediscovery of their common humanity. (Each of the 3 shows in this series can be broadcast as stand-alone programs.)

Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, with Wynton Marsalis Veteran radio producer Joe Bevilacqua hosts this entertaining, informative hour, recorded in the French Quarter of New Orleans and featuring jazz great Wynton Marsalas, jazz author and historian Donald Newlove, WNYC Radio talk show host Leonard Lopate, members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and others, on the origins of jazz, and the life and music and legendary trumpeter, LOUIS ARMSTRONG. Also featured is the music of Armstrong throughout his long career, and rare recordings, including rare audio from a 1957 CBS TV documentary, with Edward R. Murrow. A REVIEW: ***** Informational, Polished, Sound Rich Joe Bevilacqua strikes again with this superb documentary on the life and music of Louis Armstrong. The rich tapestry of music, interviews and sound from the streets of New Orleans is expertly produced. In addition to some rare recordings, the program includes interviews with Wynton Marsalas and others that really add to what is primarily a music program, rather than detract from the focus of the program. The sound quality is excellent, and the vintage recordings have been cleaned up well. The program is both entertaining and informative, and held my interest for the entire hour. This program would fit well as a special hour in any local jazz program, and I highly recommend it. (Producer) (Editorial Board) Phil Corriveau, Wisconsin Public Radio February 19, 2006 Perfect for Black History Month Special! And check out Joe Bevilacqua's VALENTINE'S "WEEK" themed programming at: http://www.prx.org/series/23013

Peace Talks: The radio series about peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution strategies. This is one of many newscast friendly hours that are currently available from Good Radio Shows, Inc. and producer Paul Ingles. In the middle part of the 20th century, if there was a news story about a peacemaking mission around the globe, chances are it contained the name of African-American diplomat Ralph Bunche. A scholar of world affairs and race relations, Bunche was recruited from academia first into the U.S. State Department, then into the fledgling United Nations. He stepped boldly onto the world stage as a peace negotiator and advocate for the liberation of peoples of color from colonial rule. Along the way, he was targeted and cleared of communist allegations, criticized as a pawn of the white establishment, and ultimately heralded as a role model for all in human relations. Today on Peace Talks, a profile in peace featuring Ralph Bunche. We'll highlight just a few chapters from this remarkable life, and try to take away some lessons about peacemaking as we talk with Bunche's UN colleague and biographer Sir Brian Urquhart, William Greaves, a filmmaker who produced a PBS documentary on Bunche, Tonya Covington, a diversity trainer inspired by Bunche, and with Ralph Bunche Jr., son of the late Ralph Bunche.

The Undiscovered Explorer: Imagining York explores the making of an American myth. This hour-long audio documentary, narrated by Danny Glover, is a production of Oregon Public Broadcasting. Through a rich weave of music, interviews, performance and dramatic readings, this program tells the story of York, William Clark's slave and the only African American member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. York's story is both heroic and tragic. He began life as the childhood playmate of Clark, but at age 12 their relationship was transformed into that of master and slave. On the Expedition, York experienced a rare level of freedom and equality, working shoulder to shoulder with white men. Upon their return, the other members of the Corps of Discovery were welcomed home with gifts and praise. York was plunged back into bondage and subservience, which ultimately shattered his life. The facts of York's story are based on fragmentary evidence. Forbidden by law to read and write, York left no written record of his own. We only know about him through the writings and stories of others. Depictions of York have changed through time, always colored by the social era in which they are told. York has been characterized as a valiant hero, an insolent and sulky slave and a happy, dancing darkie. Yet, how York himself really felt about his experiences remains a total mystery. Today, artists and historians continue to give words to this man who has no voice in history. Poetry, opera and rap -- all in York's "voice" -- are being performed as part of the current bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. A look at how York is portrayed through history opens the door to many questions about American society at large and about how history is recorded, remembered and created. It is this aspect of York -- the "Invisible Man" who exists only as a reflection of ourselves -- that informs this documentary.

Hear the first person accounts of people who lived in slavery; the voices of those who worked to end slavery and those who strove to keep it in "A Small Southern Town: The Nation's Capital In Slave Times." In this special designed for African American History Month, listeners will hear of one family's role in one of the largest mass escapes of slaves in American history. "A Small Southern Town" combines dramatic readings of first person accounts from slave times with modern day analysis to shed light on little known aspects of slave life and slave times in the Nation's Capital. ----------------------------------------- Richard Paul offers these suggestions for reading on subjects covered in his two-part program on slavery: * Arguing About Slavery, by William Lee Miller. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, c. 1996. Available at bookstores. * Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months A Prisoner (For Chairty's Sake) In Washington Jail including A Narrative Of the Voyage and Capture Of The Schooner Pearl. Published by Negro Universities Press, c. 1855. Available at the DC Historical Society. * Fugitives of the Pearl, by John Paynter. Published by Associated Publishers, Inc., Washington, DC, c. 1930. Available at the DC Historical Society. * The Life of Josiah Henson, Formally a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, by Josiah Henson, c. 1849. Available at the Montgomery County Historical Society. Newspaper Articles * "Uncle Tom's Montgomery County Cabin" by Michael Richman, The Washington Post, Wednesday December 10, 1997; Horizon section; Pg. H05 * "Escape on the Pearl: Years Before the Civil War, 77 Washington Slaves Made a Risky Bid for Freedom" by Mary Kay Ricks, The Washington Post, Wednesday August 12, 1998; Horizon section; pg. H01

Credits/Back anounce: Our story was produced by Joe Richman of Radio Diaries. Mandela: An Audio History is has just been released as a CD, hosted by Desmond Tutu with an introduction by Nelson Mandela. To find the CD, search for "Mandela: An Audio History" on Amazon or visit: www.mandelahistory.org Notes: This is a one hour version of the series, Mandela: An Audio History, which was originally broadcast as a 5-part series on All Things Considered. The host introducton is by Desmond Tutu. For more information visit the project website: www.mandelahistory.org or email the producer, Joe Richman, joe@radiodiaries.org There are a few different options for stations: Version One: no news hole (2 floating breaks) Version Two: newscast compatible (2 floating breaks) Version ThreeA: first half hour (with no host intro, ids or credits) Version ThreeB: second half hour (with no host intro, ids or credits) 15 and 30 second promos also available. Timings and Cues provided.

After months of premeditated politcal propaganda in the press, organized white militias burned the South's only black daily newspaper and overthrew Wilmington's government on the day after Election Day.  They killed an unknown number of Blacks, and exiled the mayor, many officials, and prominent citizens of color. 
The Federal government turned a blind eye to the rising tide of racism nationwide and world-wide.
Democracy's Denial explores this pivotal moment in the history of Jim Crow segregation in the newsreports, memoirs, the music, and literature of that time and place, reminding us, in the words of one historian, that the official accounts are as fictional as the novels that grew out of the story.  It traces the story through the following century, as Wilmingtonians were shaken by weeks of racial violence in 1971, and finally started to deal with the consequences.  

Ellington once said that Jump for Joy "was the hippest thing we ever did." The inspiration came from a late-night party, a convergence of Hollywood glamour and nascent civil-rights activism with one of America's greatest jazz orchestras. In the summer of 1941, as Americans warily regarded a world war that seemed to be edging ever closer to their shores, Duke Ellington staged what he would later call "the first 'social significance' show," Jump for Joy. Jump for Joy was an all-black musical revue that Ellington said "would take Uncle Tom out of the theater?and say things that would make the audience think." It featured the Ellington orchestra in its so-called "Blanton-Webster" years, playing at the peak of its powers, and up-and-coming African-American performers such as the actress Dorothy Dandridge, the blues singer Big Joe Turner, and the comedian Wonderful Smith. The poet Langston Hughes contributed a sketch entitled "Mad Scene From Woolworth's," and Ellington collaborator Billy Strayhorn took a significant hand in scoring the show. Created and presented in Los Angeles, Jump for Joy had at its center and periphery a host of legendary Hollywood figures. The musical was financed in part by the actor John Garfield; its director, Nick Castle, went on to become a famous choreographer for 20th Century Fox.. Charlie Chaplin stopped by rehearsals to give advice, Orson Welles offered to make the show a Mercury Theater production, and Mickey Rooney eagerly attempted to demonstrate his compositional talents by writing a song called "Cymbal Rockin' Sam" for Ellington's drummer Sonny Greer. Sid Kuller, who authored many of the revue's sketches and song lyrics, was a writer for MGM who had just knocked off The Big Store for the Marx Brothers. Jump for Joy opened at the Mayan Theater on July 10, 1941 and ran for 122 performances, with the Ellington orchestra playing in the pit every night as African-American performers spoke, sang, danced, and joked in rebellion against traditional representations of blacks in movies and musical theater. In a bold break with convention, Ellington expressly forbade the 60-member cast to "blacken up," or artificially darken their skin hues. "The show was done on a highly intellectual level," he recalled in his 1973 memoir Music Is My Mistress. "No crying, no moaning, but entertaining, and with social demands as a potent spice. The Negroes always left proudly with their chests sticking out." The show received mostly positive reviews, but the brash racial jubilation of songs such as "I've Got a Passport From Georgia" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin Is a Drive-In Now" provoked death threats, and one cast member was beaten as he left the theater. Although Ellington hoped to take the show to Broadway, its lack of stereotyping and its unabashed celebration of African-American pride made it an unlikely candidate for New York's Great White Way. After closing on September 29, 1941, it was revived for one week in November, and then again in Miami Beach in 1959 for an aborted two-week run. Although the musical has occasionally been recreated both onstage and in concert by others, and the original revue thoroughly documented by Ellington assistant Patricia Willard for a 1988 Smithsonian LP, Jump for Joy remains an important but often-overlooked chapter in the career of Duke Ellington. He later remarked that it paved the way for Black, Brown and Beige, his ambitious 1943 orchestral recreation of African-American history. It also served as an early salvo in the cultural struggle for equality. When a young San Francisco protester confronted Ellington in the early 1960s with the question, "When are you going to do your piece for civil rights?" Ellington replied, "I did my piece more than 20 years ago when I wrote Jump for Joy." WFIU's Jump for Joy: Duke Ellington's Celebratory Musical features nearly all of the music that Ellington's 1941 Blanton-Webster band recorded for the show, including the classic hits "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)," "Rocks In My Bed," and "Chocolate Shake." Other highlights include a portion of comedian Wonderful Smith's monologue, a radio medley spot, and Ellington himself discussing the musical and its impact, more than 20 years after its debut. Guests include Ellington assistant and Jump for Joy scholar Patricia Willard, Smithsonian Masterworks Orchestra conductor David Baker, Ellington biographer John Edward Hasse, and cultural historian Michael McGerr. The program is written, produced, and narrated by WFIU announcer David Brent Johnson. Duke Ellington once said that Jump for Joy "was the hippest thing we ever did." As Patricia Willard notes, it fulfilled his lifelong criteria for success: "doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right place, with the right people." In an age when the film and theater industries presented African-Americans primarily as servants and porters, as fearful and clowning stereotypes, Duke Ellington dared to produce and grace a musical with the same dignity, wit, beauty, and unabiding hipness that he always brought to his band. Jump for Joy is a cultural milestone and another example of how this great American composer traversed the racial and aesthetic boundaries of his time.