StoryBoard 30

“It’s a gift from Memphians to Memphis, in the belief that free concerts bring people together and build community. There’s nothing like it. Food and music. 19 months of being in the pandemic, and being dark, people realize truly how important this place is. It is the heartbeat of our city, and it is something that we need. We all need it. We need the joy that comes from the Shell...

“We’re fifty years later now (since the tipping point of the Civil Rights era and the King assassination), and once again, young activists in America are making Americans take a look in the mirror in terms of our true history of race and racial prejudice. Once again the young activists are calling us to account. Once again America is having to look at issues of race dead in the eye. And once again, we are at a tipping point...

Join host Mark Fleischer as he talks with historian and Tennessee History For Kids executive director Bill Carey, as the two discuss the importance of learning history, about the controversies around ‘critical race theory,’ and about the 2021 in-person TN History for Kids Summer Road Shows in West Tennessee.

“My characters meet at Ole Miss, when there were very few Black students on the campus, in 1966. In February of 1970, on campus, a group called Up With People gave a concert. And there was this huge protest where 60 Black kids were arrested. Eight of the those students came to be known as the Ole Miss Eight. (The character) John is a composite of two of the men who were part of the Ole Miss Eight...

“I grew up in a one-traffic-light Mississippi town, a place of innocence and nostalgia that never reached my door. A cotton-top little girl, I was entered into beauty contest at the age of eight, but even the strength and poise I learned to present during competitions couldn’t protect me from my neglectful, angry mother and absent father...

“Memphis is a city based on contradictions. And great things have happened because of cultural collisions and contradictions. And what makes it great is the fact that you can go to a small venue that’s doesn’t even have a stage and see some of the most amazing people making some of the most amazing music. I’ve been around a lot of places, seen a lot of people play. It’s not just Memphis pride. There’s something special here...

“These venues provide a laboratory for growth. I’ve played some big gigs and a small gigs, but honestly some of the most substantial exponential growth I’ve ever had was here in town, like with regular gigs. It wouldn’t have happened were it not for those venues.” ~Steve Selvidge, Memphis musician

“If there hadn’t been independent venues, we wouldn’t have had a place to play — at the outset, and almost at any point along our arc of being a band, to the current day...

“Sometimes they see things I don’t see, like in this book. . . where the children know something the adults don’t. In this story that does happen, and I think it does sometimes happen in real life, and that children can clue us into things. There came a point in this story where mom realizes Josephine was already on to the truth in a way that mom had not yet come to...

“We’ve never seen anything like this in our lifetime. It’s traumatizing. And some people have better coping skills than others and have a support system. If you don’t have a well-developed support system and then you’re isolated . . . some of the things that are happening with mental health and substance abuse . . . it’s really tragic. We’ve seen people that have been sober for a decade that relapsed and went back to using because they just didn’t know any other way to deal with the stress...

“I became very verklempt. It was such a wonder to play it and hear it again. It’s hard to describe. When I was down here and the organ was being demonstrated, he (Tony Thomas) was playing ‘There Will Never Be Another You.’ And I had a flashback. All those hundreds of people who courted in this theatre, during the war . . . they were all around me. Funny how that happens. It’s amazing, really, when you think through all of this, all the things that have happened in this room . . ...