Freaks Like Us: Black Misfit Performance on Soul!
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Published:March 2015
Soul! was a cultural expression of Black Arts and Black Power that also dared to explore the tensions within nationalist political and cultural formations. Produced and hosted by Ellis Haizlip, a gay man, the show made a point of making visible black identities ordinarily marginalized within nationalist discourse, including those of homosexuals and feminists. At the same time, Soul! rendered a vision of Black Arts and Black Power that was more inclusive of difference than has usually been recognized. In the social world Soul! represented, especially in episodes featuring Nikki Giovanni, James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan and Amiri Baraka, tolerance for difference and dissent coexisted with radical imaginings of a “black” world.
Bibliography
Ellis B. Haizlip Papers (gift of Doris Sanders), Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Ford Foundation Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York, NY.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Archives, New York, NY.
National Public Broadcasting Archives, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
WNET Archives, New York, NY.
WNET Collection; Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound Division; Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
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