Students, faculty and community partners enjoy the show
Students, faculty and community partners enjoy a hip hop show by rappers from the Brazilian NGO Instituto Enraizados (The Rooted). (Photo by Rhiannon Jenkins) 

Brazilian Activism, Culture, Education and Religion, with a Hip Hop Soundtrack

Ronni Butts and Zaria Hanchell
NCCU students Ronni Butts (left) and Zaria Hanchell, along with Gladys Mitchell-Walthour and her daughter, Truth. (Photo Rhiannon Jenkins)

John D. French was exhausted but happy enjoying a hip hop show by rappers from the Brazilian NGO Instituto Enraizados (The Rooted). The March 3 performance concluded a daylong conference on “Hip Hop, Faith, and Citizenship,” the closing chapter of a week of activities organized as part of the Bass Connections Project “Activism, Culture and Education for Citizenship in Brazil and the U.S.” 

Co-led by French, a Duke professor of History whose research centers on Brazilian culture and politics, and Duke alumna Gladys Mitchell-Walthour, the NCCU Dan Blue Endowed Chair in Political Science, as well as two Duke Romance Studies graduate students, Lucas Lopes and Courtney Crumpler, the two-year project brought together scholars, artists and students from Duke, North Carolina Central University (NCCU), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Instituto Enraizados and the Federal Rural University in Rio de Janeiro to investigate key forms of activism and cultural organizing.