Relics of segregation


I am way out of touch with popular culture and so I had never heard of John Legend before the Oscars this year when the news reported that he and Common (another performer whom I had never heard of until recently) had given a boffo live performance of the song Glory from the film Selma during the Academy Awards show, where it won an award and where the two gave great acceptance speeches.

In general, I tend not to watch the celebrity interviews on The Daily Show and so skipped the part where Jon Stewart interviews Legend as his guest. But I later read that why Legend was on was to talk about was the new documentary he produced called Southern Rites about the town of Montgomery, Georgia that had, until 2010, segregated high school proms. You can read about that story here that contains an interview with the photographer whose pictures of the segregated proms in 2009 appeared in the New York Times Magazine and brought the issue to national attention.

So I watched it and it was good and I hope to see the documentary when it is released.

(This clip aired on May 11, 2015. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)

Comments

  1. says

    I think the mis-en-scene was cheesy; that song deserves a more understated performance.
    Also, the mix sucked. I could barely make out what the spoken-word performer was saying; maybe his voice was pitched in the flat spot where my hearing’s damaged, but -- if it wasn’t -- he needed to either slow down or shout.

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