First hour: Special broadcast — "Witness: Black History Month"
Second hour: Special broadcast — "Selected Shorts: A Celebration of Langston Hughes"
We bring you special national programming today.
In the first hour, a new special hour-long edition of "Witness History" from the BBC World Service, bringing together some incredible interviews looking at the African-American experience. Told by people who were there, we hear stories that are fascinating, harrowing, and inspiring.
Then in the second hour, it's "Selected Shorts: A Celebration of Langston Hughes." This special program, hosted by stage and film actor Teagle F. Bougere, celebrates the protean literary master and social activist Langston Hughes (1901-1967). It features two of his most striking works. In “Passing” Hughes reflects on a difficult aspect of the Black experience—the need some felt to “pass” as white. Bougere is the reader. And then Joe Morton performs one of Hughes most celebrated works, “The Blues I’m Playing,” which charts the long and complex relationship between a brilliant young Black pianist and her white patron. Both stories reflect Hughes’ explorations of questions of race, identity, and personal destiny. The show will also include a much-anthologized favorite, “Thank You, Ma’am,” in which a feisty older woman sets a young boy on the right path. The reader is Pauletta Washington.
