In this episode, Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in discussion about Martin Luther King, Jr. with Dr. Maurice O. Wallace. Williams is Director of the Trotter Institute at UMass Boston and Wallace is Professor of English at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775-1995, and coeditor of Pictures of Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity. Williams and Wallace discuss his latest book King’s Vibrato: Modernism, Blackness, and the Sonic Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Duke University Press, 2022) in which he explores the history of sound in the Black experience through an analysis of King’s vibrato. In this text, Wallace conjoins history and critical theory to discuss the “modernist soundscapes” that shaped King’s voice and expression. He further argues that King’s vibrato was produced out of a series of elements including ecclesiastical architecture, instrumentation (the organ), the audience, song, and technology. For more about Wallace click here Maurice O. Wallace and to order his book click on this link King's Vibrato: Modernism, Blackness, and the Sonic Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.