Scene on Radio: The Land That Never Has Been Yet

Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University

As the 2020 election approaches, the survival of the United States as a democratic republic is a topic of national conversation—Trumpian authoritarianism; voter suppression and gerrymandering; concerns about foreign intervention, election security, and the role of money in politics. Our twelve-part Season 4 series on democracy touches on those concerns but goes much deeper, effectively retelling the story of the United States from its beginnings up to the present as we complicate, maybe upend, our listeners’ understanding of American history. Our series title, The Land That Never Has Been Yet, is borrowed from the Langston Hughes poem, “Let America Be America Again.” The Land reunites the Seeing White series team: my collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika, journalism and media studies professor at Rutgers University, and our editor, the public radio veteran Loretta Williams.

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