For Dr. Freddrick Leonard, joining the Nashville Student Movement in the Fall of 1960 meant learning to suppress his instincts. As a high schooler in Chattanooga, he sat in at lunch counters with other students, and they defended themselves when they were attacked. And his shift to non-violent protest was especially difficult. But even after years of practicing pacifism, that impulse to fight back was buried, but it wasn't subdued. In this episode Dr. Leonard speaks with poet, hip-hop and spoken word artist Saran Thompson about the difficulty of conforming to the ideology of a movement, how he came to grapple with the limits of non-violence as an ideal, and how sometimes keeping focused on the work means accepting that other people will be the ones to reap the benefit. Then Saran takes the down and back again of Dr. Leonard's pacifist’s journey, and turns it into poetry.

Versify is a production of Nashville Public Radio and The Porch — Nashville’s nonprofit literary center. Editing for this episode came from WPLN’s Mack Linebaugh with additional editing by Anita Bugg. The episode was written, hosted, produced, and recorded by Joshua Moore.

The music is by Blue Dot Session

The show is distributed by P-R-X.

A Klan hit, an ambush, a sanctuary under siege, these are just a handful of the encounters that Civil Rights veteran, Dr. Allen Cason Jr., survived during his time in the Nashville Student Movement. In this episode Allen sits down with poet Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay to detail his firsthand account of the Montgomery riot that shifted the course of a movement, how his willingness to risk everything for the cause of integration cost Allen his educational ambitions, and multiple years of his life, and how sometimes the work of serving your community means concealing what you’ve sacrificed. Then Lagnajita takes the pitfalls, prison terms, and conquests of this Civil Rights hero’s legacy, and turns them into poetry.

Versify is a production of Nashville Public Radio and The Porch — Nashville’s nonprofit literary center. Editing for this episode came from WPLN’s Mack Linebaugh with additional editing by Anita Bugg. The episode was written, hosted, produced, and recorded by Joshua Moore.

The music is by Blue Dot Session

The show is distributed by P-R-X.

After the carnage in Birmingham and the bus bombing in Anniston, Rip Patton and the Nashville students set out to continue the Freedom Rides. Hear how their journey finds them in the crosshairs of Bull Connor and the Alabama Klan, and ultimately in a Mississippi maximum security prison. Rip talks to poet Destiny Birdsong about how the legacy of that activism points the way for current protest, and then Destiny transforms Rip’s spellbinding history in poetry.

Versify is a production of Nashville Public Radio and The Porch — Nashville’s nonprofit literary center. Editing for this episode came from WPLN’s Mack Linebaugh with additional editing by Anita Bugg. The episode was written, hosted, and produced by Joshua Moore. Today’s story and poem were recorded by Joshua Moore at Nashville Public Radio.

The music is by Blue Dot Session.
The show is distributed by P-R-X.