Songs can work like time capsules, shooting us through space to remember the sweet awkwardness of a first dance. Or sink us back into the free magic flowing through every vein at the party of our lives. Yet sometimes we get stuck inside that time capsule: Tracy Chapman speeds down the highway in her fast car, and Luke Combs turns out to be the little kid singing in the backseat the whole time, all grown up now.
Wesley Hogan
A Walk with Bob Moses
It’s not often that people return to the scene of betrayal.
Hard Call & Wise Responses
Historian – and longtime First contributor – Wesley Hogan was sparked by The Help’s spin on the Southern turn toward freedom in the 60s. Her piece on the book and movie starts our mini-roundtable on this cultural phenomenon. Hogan’s Call generated a response from a reading group of retired black women who had their own opinions about The Help. Ancella Bickley recorded their views for First and her summary follows Hogan’s piece. After that, Hogan returns with a quick review of recent historical writing related to the subject of black domestics.
The Politics of Patience
Wesley Hogan’s “Many Minds, One Heart” (Duke University Dissertation, 2000) stands as the freshest work on the Civil Rights Movement since Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom. Hogan’s dissertation is both a painstaking piece of scholarship and an urgent message to the grassroots.