And So, All right, so I'm here with Walter Johnson and Tef Poe. Can you start by introducing yourself? Maybe start with Tef and then go to Walter?

Sure. My name is Tef Poe.

I'm a bit of a renaissance man from St. Louis, Missouri, hip-hop artists, activists.

I do a little bit of everything.

I just closed out.

My first acting gig is a Thesebian in a play called Spell Number

Seven with the Black Rep.

And yeah, man, I know Walter through my studies at Harvard,

and he's the reason that I ended up coming to Harvard to be a part of his

program that he was hosting out there and it went to a vast assortment of other places from there.

Yeah. assortment of other places from there. Yeah, all right, I'm Walter Johnson. I'm from Columbia, Missouri. I teach history at Harvard.

Along with Tef and some other folks, Dean Nichols, a designer from St. Louis, I've been involved in something called the Commonwealth Project, which is an effort to bring together activists, artists, and academics to do work in single of social change work,

revolutionary social change. And I just finished a book called The Broken Heart of America, which is about

the history of St Louis and history of U.S. Empire and anti-Blackness.

Cool.

And you know, I was introduced to each of your work separately.

Actually, I don't know, I started listening to Tafo like I don't even remember before I even know before I even met you before even you know who knew who Walter Johnson was

I remember when you when you first came out here I asked you and you said you've been listening to it for a while.

Yeah, yeah, listen to the album that came out in 2015 and you know, so and then also I read the river was it river of

dark dreams I completely forgot the name of your book. But yeah and so like it was it's cool because I met both of you out in Cambridge through the

Through the program that you're running there Walter I completely forgot the name I'm sorry.

That's right I mean we the name should be changed.

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