Freedom Summer: Pitfalls, Prison Terms And Conquests

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 of Versify, Allen sits down with poet Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay to detail his 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 as well as 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 PRX.