In a timely move (for us here at the Project, at least), the Folger Library’s podcast, Shakespeare Unlimited, has re-released its 19th episode (Shakespeare in Black and White: “Our Own Voices with Our Own Tongues”), a great 30-minute discussion of Shakespeare and the African-American experience.
This episode revisits the era when Jim Crow segregation was at its height, from a few years after the end of the Civil War to the 1940s and 1950s, with a discussion that includes landmark performances, like Orson Welles’s Depression-era all-black Macbeth and Paul Robeson’s Othello (which is perfect as we wrap-up our three-month discussion of the play).
If you combine this one with Episode 20 (African Americans and Shakespeare: “Freedom, Hey-Day! Hey-Day, Freedom!”), you’ve got a nice, little Black History Month double-bill.