37 min listen
Strange Fruit: Critical Media Consumption and the Mall St. Matthews Incident
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
30 minutes
Released:
Jan 3, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
The day after Christmas is always busy at shopping malls. The holiday blockbusters are in the movie theaters, and gift cards are burning holes in pockets. But this year on Dec. 26, security at the Mall St. Matthews was apparently overwhelmed by the number of teenagers in the mall. What exactly happened and how many young shoppers were there remain in question. What we know for sure, though, is that local news media seized on the word "riot" in reporting on the incident — despite a lack of injuries, arrests or property damage, and the insistence of many eyewitnesses that no riots occurred. On this week's show, we talk about the closure of the mall, the media's reaction and the story's racial overtones with WFPL's urban affairs reporter Jacob Ryan, who reported on the incident and the response to it, and attorney Joe Dunman, who wrote an opinion piece about it for Insider Louisville.
Released:
Jan 3, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #54: 'Eenie Meanie' Examines Baby Boomer Racism & Louisville Busing Riots: "These buses came back from the West End with these little kids on them, and they were crying, there were windows knocked out. They had been beaten with baseball bats, they had been called every horrible racial name you can expect, right here in this town." It sounds like a scene we'd expect to see in the deep South, but this happened in Louisville in the middle of the 1970s, when public schools implemented the busing system. That's how performing artist Teresa Willis remembers it, and it makes up part of her one-woman show, [Eenie Meanie](http://eeniemeanie.com/). Because Louisville itself was so segregated, neighborhood schools were largely either black or white. Busing was designed to achieve greater diversity within school, but was met with resistance. "Racism really came out of the closet in my community," Teresa remembers. "There's crosses burning at the football field. Literally, we're at a by Strange Fruit