Episode 81 (Voices of the Civil Rights Movement)

Actor, director, and voice/dialect coach Jacqueline Springfield returns to the podcast for October 2024 to discuss voices of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Paul and Jacqueline analyze snippets of 11 speeches, ranging in time from Booker T. Washington in 1895 to President Barack Obama in 2017, looking at dialect, content, and style. It’s a remarkable journey through not just pronunciation but American history.

Jacqueline previously appeared on episode 43 of the podcast, from August 2021, to discuss heightened language and Black playwrights. She serves as assistant professor of acting and co-coordinator of the acting concentration in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Kennesaw State University. Her dialect coaching credits include: the Alliance Theatre, True Colors Theatre, American Players Theatre, Synchronicity Theatre, Actors Express, the Kennedy Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (NY), and the Black Arts Institute at Stella Adler.

Jacqueline holds a master of fine arts degree in acting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and is a certified associate instructor of Fitzmaurice Voicework and an IDEA associate editor for the Southern United States. She is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA, and continues to work as a performer in film, television, theatre, and voiceover.

The podcast features short, fair-use snippets of 11 speeches, in chronological order. You will find the speeches in their entirety below:

1. Booker T. Washington

2. E.B. DuBois

3. Mamie Till Mobley

4. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Interview is copyright 60 Minutes/CBS News.

5. Fannie Lou Hamer

6. Malcolm X

7. Stokely Carmichael

8. Shirley Chisholm

Interview is copyright Meet the Press/NBC News.

9. Jesse Jackson

10. Al Sharpton

11. Barack Obama

(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) is courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)

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