ARTSPEAK RADIO +Hugh Merrill, Rick Stasi, Natasha Ria El-Scari, & Patricia Williams

Wednesday November 6, 2019 noon - 1pm CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio streaming live wwwkkfi.org Producer/host welcomes artist/writer Hugh Merrill, writer/performer Natasha Ria El-Scari, artist/writer Rick Stasi, and Patricia Williams Cinema KC. HUGH MERRILL-Whiteout is a multi-dimensional project designed to create dialogues on heritage, privilege, power and racism in America. It is meant to help others step forward and discuss the truth about their family histories and their own perceptions about race and discrimination. This performance includes staged readings of Merrill’s memoir, a panel discussion, poetry and an opportunity for audience participation through stories and questions. For two years, Merrill and his daughter, Rebecca Merrill, have been investigating their family history and connection to the insidious Jim Crow laws in the American South. In an unexpected discovery, they found out about their family connection to the legal lynching of Sargent Edgar Caldwell. This provoked a deeper investigation into their family past as well as a closer look at the current state of racial inequality in this country. Merrill, an internationally renowned artist, has written a memoir of his coming-of-age story in a house governed by those who helped write the Jim Crow laws, and the memoir is available…