A discussion with Aram Goudsouzian, Professor of History at University of Memphis, and Charles McKinney, Professor of Africana Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. McKinney is the author of numerous essays on African American history and the book Greater Freedom: The Evolution of the Civil Rights Struggle in Wilson, North Carolina, published in 2010, and is currently at work on a book titled Losing the Party of Lincoln: George Washington Lee and the Struggle for the Soul of the Republican Party, which explores the life and work of George Washington Lee, an African American Republican operative and civil rights activist who lived in Memphis in the middle of the twentieth century. Goudsouzian is the author of five books, including most recently Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear, published in 2014, and 2019’s The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America.

Together, Goudsouzian and McKinney edited the 2018 collection An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee, published by University of Kentucky Press, which we discuss in this episode.