A Conversation with Roger Guenveur Smith and Caroline Randall Williams at OZ Arts Nashville

This dynamic, free-of-charge evening features two acclaimed writers and performers who are influencing the national conversation about civil rights through powerful work that confronts the issues through both personal and historical lenses. Incisive Nashville poet and author Caroline Randall Williams is an influential activist/scholar/performer whose recent New York Times essay, My Body Is a Confederate Monument,, has become an important touchstone in the heated 2020 conversations about race relations and history. Award-winning writer and performer Roger Guenveur Smith is a frequent collaborator with filmmaker Spike Lee, who directed film versions of Smiths acclaimed solo performances, which are often based on historic characters in the history of civil rights, including A Huey P. Newton Story, current Netflix offering Rodney King, and the upcoming Frederick Douglass Now.Both artists will read excerpts from their work and engage in an insightful discussion about the ways the past is informing our present moment. This event will be moderated by Andrea Blackman of Nashville Public Library's Civil Rights Room.