Episode 2: L. O. Sloan: A Gunrunner For the Arts (Part 1)

<p>This week we'll meet activist/performer/impresario and historian Lenwood O. Sloan, a man whose extraordinary career has unfolded like a half century-long social change musical.</p><h2><u>THRESHOLD QUESTIONS AND DELICIOUS QUOTES</u></h2><p><strong>?What defines a "gunrunner for the arts?"</strong></p><blockquote>"I try to take things that already exist, and through positioning and repositioning to create magic, you know, to motivate, but performance and visual art, literature and writing, film, you know, whatever medium is the best catalyst or elixir for the magic, but I'm a gun runner for the arts"</blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><p><strong>? How does history become an art form?</strong></p><blockquote>"Well, you know, everything has a history, and everything has a story, and it's the human person that is the juice that brings the linear, sequential, chronological history, and oral tradition of storytelling together into art. It's not what happened in 1864, 1791, or 2018 you know. It's who were the people? What does it mean to you? What relevance does it have for your story today?"</blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><p><strong>?What can the historic struggles for the passage of the 15th and 19th amendments to the U.S. Constitution teach us as we navigate the Covid Universe?</strong></p><blockquote>"You know African American women, 1918 to 1920, who were trying to not only support to vote for women but to find a place for themselves and that they were doing that against the landscape of the 1918 flu. They were doing it in a pandemic year. You know, they were doing it with their men coming back from World War One having segregation in their communities. They, they were doing it on the eve of a national election of 1920, and they were doing it on the eve of the 1920 Census."</blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><p><strong>?Monuments have often been used to distort and obscure our complex history. How can a monument reveal and celebrate these buried stories? </strong></p><blockquote>"So I felt t