On Second Thought For Friday, September 2, 2016

The Decatur Book Festival kicks off this weekend. We bring you a preview of the authors and artists who will speak at this year's event. 

Frank Hamilton is a legend in the American folk revival scene. He performed throughout the 1950s and 1960s with The Weavers and Pete Seeger. Hamilton now runs a folk music school in Candler Park. Students gather to learn instruments like guitar, fiddle and banjo, and to jam with Hamilton. We stop by the school for a music lesson, and talk to Frank Hamilton about folk music’s significance today. Then, a theater company in rural Fulton County has gone to extreme measures to change the look and feel of professional theater. Serenbe Playhouse offers outdoor productions in settings that are as authentic as you can get to the storyline, and it recently expanded to Atlanta. "On Second Thought" producer Sean Powers paid Serenbe a visit to catch a production of “Charlotte's Web.” Frank Hamilton’s folk school and Serenbe will perform at the Decatur Book Festival this weekend. 

Then, thousands of students once roamed the hallways of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, but now the campus stands largely empty after a financial scandal in 2002. Atlanta photographer Andrew Feiller was granted access to capture images of what was once one of the South’s most prominent historically black colleges. His collection of sixty photographs are published in his book, “Without Regard to Sex, Race, or Color: The Past, Present, and Future of One Historically Black College.” He'll speak at the Decatur Book Festival this Saturday afternoon. We speak with Andrew and Stanley Pritchett, the current president of Morris Brown College, about the images and what it tells readers about the past, present, and future of Morris Brown College. Plus, there are many ways to describe reactions to the deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and other victims of police killings. But one four-letter word has surfaced time and again: rage. Specifically black rage from African-Americans fed up with violence targeted at unarmed members of their community. But Emory Professor Carol Anderson says this focus on black rage is misses the point. We hear an excerpt from her new book, “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.” She will speak at the Decatur Book Festival on Saturday afternoon.

And, Georgia's decision not to expand Medicaid has cost the state billions of dollars in federal funding and thousands of jobs, and may prompt several hospitals to shut down. It’s also forced large hospitals like Grady Memorial in Atlanta to absorb the costs of helping poor, uninsured and mentally ill patients. Journalist Mike King traces the history of urban hospitals and how public policies have failed them in his book, "A Spirit of Charity: Restoring the Bond between America and Its Public Hospitals." King will be part of the Decatur Book Festival this weekend.