The Blues, Trauma, and Public Memory: Willie King and the Liberators

• In Event: Back Down Memory Lane: Explorations of Absence, Presence, and Institutionalized Public Memory

Abstract

This essay examines the interrelationship of popular culture, public memory, and human rights. Alabama-based blues musician Willie King has called attention to how the injustices of the past are still embedded in the social and political practices of today. At the same time, King’s message is a direct repudiation of hegemonic White southern memories that openly deny the brutality and violence embedded in the social practices of slavery and sharecropping, among other Southern atrocities.

Authors

• Stephen King, Delta State University

• Renee Foster, Delta State University