Tonight, PBS is airing a documentary about the war over textbook content in Texas. Two years ago, radio documentarian Trey Kay made a one hour special on the first major textbook fight, which took place in West Virginia in the 1960s. The fight back then was more than political - books were burned, schools boycotted, and one protestor was shot through the heart. Kay joined us to discuss what many see as the start of the American culture war.
Joseph Torres, Senior External Affairs Director, Free Press; co-author, News for All The People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media
When we think about the history of media in America, it’s easy to think of it in terms of technology – from the rise of newspapers to radio to television to the Internet and beyond. Or you could look at media as a vehicle for reflecting and even contributing to social change – from Colonial-era newspapers encouraging the American Revolution to TV cameras bringing the civil rights movement into 1960s-era living rooms. But there are other ways to examine media in America. Joseph Torres, along with co-author Juan Gonzalez, recently placed the history of media under a different sort of prism – that of race. In their book News for All The People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, Torres and Gonzalez explore how America’s racial divisions have played a major role in the development of our media system. Joseph Torres will appear at this week's Grassroots Radio Conference in Champaign/Urbana.
Stephen Lyons, Writer, a two-time recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for prose writing and a Pushcart Prize nominee; author of three books, most recently The 1,000-Year Flood: Destruction, Loss, Rescue and Redemption Along the Mississippi River
Michael Kleen, M.A., M.S., Writer; Historian
With Jim Ridings (Award-Winning Investigative Reporter)
With Tom Kacich (Staff Writer for The News-Gazette)
With James Ballowe (Editor, "Christmas in Illinois")
With Carla Bittel (Associate Professor of History, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles)
With Robert Stone (Academy Award-Nominated Documentarian; Producer, Director and Writer of "The Civilian Conservation Corps" documentary)
With Ilona Matkovszki (Historic Preservation Activist; member of the Urbana Public Arts Commission), and , and Dennis Roberts (Alderman on the Urbana City Council reprsenting Ward 5, East Urbana; Founding Member of the Historic East Urbana Neighborhood Association; Book Designer, University of Illinois Press)
