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| From the play Walk On--The Story of Rosa Parks. Note--this is not Najwa Parkins, the gifted singer/actress who appeared in the production at the Raue Center. |
It turned out that yesterday was Rosa Parks’s birthday, something I
would have remembered if I had glanced at the Montgomery Bus Boycott calendar that hangs over the desk in my study, the one my old friend Carole
Bilotta Clark sent me from the Alabama
capital, or if I had not been a day
late posting the lengthy piece on the assassination of Kentucky Gov. William Goebel.
Instead I was reminded from the stage
of the Raue Center for the Arts,
a beautifully restored gem of a
small classic movie palace by the
cast of a one-act musical called Walk
On—The Story of Rosa Parks.
My wife Kathy Brady-Murfin spotted the production a few months ago in
a Raue Center brochure and snapped up a couple of tickets. We have been eagerly looking forward to the show
ever since.
After an early dinner at Giorgio’s a couple of blocks away in downtown Crystal Lake we arrived at the
theater about 10 minutes before the scheduled 7 pm show. We were ushered
to prime aisle seats in the fourth row. Only a handful
of the 600 seats on the main floor
were occupied. We assumed
that the balcony was closed.
We were disappointed by
the turn out, but people filtered in occupying scattered seats in the auditorium. By the time the house lights dimmed there were probably over 100 in attendance.
Most, like us, were gray heads. I spotted a handful of families with children or
early teens. And at the last moment four animated, hip looking young
people who looked like they might be high
school or college age theater
geeks. Maybe white bread, conservative McHenry County was not the kind of place where a show about a Civil Rights icon and genuine trouble maker was destined to
find a wide audience. But maybe it was just the kind of place that needed a show like this.
If the performers in the small cast
were disappointed by the turnout they gave no indication of it. They
literally burst on the stage with energy
and conviction. This would be no dry documentary or dour
drama but a living Hallelujah! shout
for freedom and a hymn to a People’s struggles.
We learned of Mrs. Park’s remarkable act of defiance from a handbill calling for a protest
boycott of the city busses picked
up from the street and shared by Rosa’s friend Jackie—Justine Appiah-Danquah—and local NAACP leader E.D. Nixon—Earnest
Jordan. Regarding Parks he says
“they are in for it now!” This is a
woman they already know well and who
is thus established as a veteran
activist, not a random seamstress with
sore feet.
Backed by an onstage trio of white
musicians who double as a chorus to
the action and playing characters in
the show—keyboardist Sadie Faircloth,
bass guitarist Raidford Faircloth, and Bob
Lucas on electric bass who also wrote the music for the
production—Jackie and Nixon burst out with a joyful, gospel infused song Today I Feel Like Walking which
celebrated of feeling of liberation at
finally being able to fight back against oppression.
I believe the audience was at first
a bit stunned. I don’t know what they were expecting,
but it wasn’t this. They weren’t yet ready to clap hands or shout
amen. Despite the strong singing
there was scant applause after the opening number. But that would change.
Rosa herself—Najhwa Parkins—was introduced in a flash back to her childhood in
the tiny Alabama town of Pine Level. She was already a serious child with a firm idea of her self-worth and
identity with firm ambitions. A chance
encounter with a white girl, the
daughter of plantation owner where
the whole family picks cotton every
year (Sadie Faircloth) left her injured,
confused, and resentful. Her beloved grandfather (Raidford Faircloth) who was born a slave but
so light skinned that he could pass for white, wised the girl up to
the ways of Mr. Charlie in song.
The story picked up in Montgomery where
Rosa was sent to the Industrial School
for Girls, the only available high
school for Black young women. She was put to work 10 hours a day in a sewing shop in exchange for two hours
of instruction in the evening. She met Miss
Evans, a teacher at the school and reoccurring character again played by
Sadie Faircloth who seems torn by sympathy
for her charges and a loyalty, or at least resignation, to the system that
oppressed them. Fellow student Jackie
tried to reassure Rosa and also to get her to loosen up her tightly wound
temperament with a rollicking
barrelhouse blues Welcome to the
Party. At this point even the
audience was loosening up, clapping along, cheering, and rewarding the
performance with an enthusiastic round of applause. This enthusiasm and engagement built through
the rest of the show.
The show skipped over Rosa’s
marriage and reconnected with her when she practically had to break into the
local chapter of the NAACP headed by Nixon where her off-stage husband was a
member. It was not made clear exactly
how early this was—1943—which would have helped make more clear the length and depth
of Parks’s commitment to the struggle.
It chronicled her work with the NAACP as the chapter’s long-time secretary, especially her work
recording the abuses heaped on local
Black citizens by police, local
authorities, and racist gangs. It also highlighted her long-time work in
voter registration, where she once
again encountered Miss Evans, now a registrar
who refuses to give Parks passing scores on the infamous literacy test of the period.
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| NAACP Chapter president E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks. |
Later, after Rosa is finally
registered, Miss Evans quit the job
in the Clerk’s office and approached
Rosa tearfully apologizing, The duet
between the two, Forgiveness hinted at the possibility of racial reconciliation without pretending
it would be easy or sugarcoating the
obstacles.
The play accompanied her to the
famed Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, radical interracial training
camp for labor and civil rights activists from across the South.
That experience broadened Park’s
horizons and perhaps most
importantly gave her the first experience she ever had of living equally with whites and collaborating with them.
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| Rosa Parks being finger printed and booked in Montgomery, Alabama. |
The story of Park’s final act of
defiance was related to Nixon and Jackie after her release from jail. The two help her act it out on the Spartan stage. Rosa made it clear that although this
exact day had not been planned, something like it was long in the works and inevitable. She dispelled
the fairy tale that she was just a poor tired seamstress whose feet
hurt. I Will Sit Down, her defiant anthem had the audience finally
in real cheers.
The cast summarized the 381 day long Montgomery Bus Boycott and its eventual
victory in a few sentences without mentioning Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. once. I don’t believe that
this was a slight on his memory.
Rather the company chose in emphasize
the long-haul commitment of
Parks, Nixon, the NAACP and the sacrifices of the ordinary Black citizens of Montgomery. Too often the whole Civil Rights movement is
pictured as the personal achievement of
safe and saintly hero, which robs it
of its fundamental radicalism as a people’s movement.
The play wound up with all hands
joining in a rousing reprise of Today I Feel Like Walking this time with
the crowd on its feet. They wrapped the
whole whirlwind experience up in
just under an hour.
The play was a production of the
unique Mad River Theater Works, a touring ensemble based in the rural Midwest which has mounted 25
original productions over the last 26 years.
Founded by Bob Lucas, who has written most of the music and performed in
the shows, productions have included musicals about folk legend John Henry, a town that is a station on the Underground
Railway, the first American Black
aviator, and Baseball star Jackie Robinson
among many others.
The shows are intended for multi-age audiences and often play at schools and colleges. Unlike some other historical presentations I
have seen for school, they do not pull
their punches or water down their
content. Kids are addressed frankly as intelligent
people capable of facing harsh
truths and developing ethical responses. We were happy to hear that the troupe is
staying in Crystal Lake today and will repeat the show in front of more than
500 local students.
By the way, that troupe is made up
of seasoned and thorough professional performers with wide experience in regional theater and especially on the musical stage.
I am impressed that Bob Lucas and playwright Jeff Hooper as white men were unafraid to tackle Black
themes without condensation or the
introduction of sympathetic White
characters who can make it all
better.
I took such a leap myself back in 2005.
While watching the TV news I
was struck by the scene of Rosa Parks laid
out in state under the Dome of the
Capital. Long lines waited hours to
pass the coffin. By happenstance it was on Halloween night. I was struck with poetic inspiration. In an
experience much like automatic writing in
which I seemed to be channeling another
spirit, I dashed off the longest
poem I have ever written or ever expect to write.
More astonishing, I have hardly
revised a word since.
I dared to write in Rosa Parks’s own
voice as if speaking from the spirit
realm.
I had heard her voice in recorded
interviews and tried to catch the quality.
More audaciously, I read it
in her soft accents when I performed it in public. No one threw
tomatoes and I later got some notes of approval from black poets.
The poem struck many of the notes of
last night’s play, but to Park’s story and musings
up through her years in Detroit,
including her anguish over the violence and seeming hopelessness of Black urban youth.
Here is that poem.
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| Rosa Parks lying in State in the Rotunda of the Capitol on October 31, 2005--by chance Halloween. |
Rosa
Parks on Halloween 2005
I didn’t hold truck with Halloween.
I was a good Christian woman.
Ask anyone who ever knew me,
they will
tell you so.
Back in Detroit young fools,
with pints
and pistols
in their
back pockets
burned the
neighborhood
each
Halloween.
Hell Night they called it
and it was.
Heathen business, I say.
I passed on a few days ago.
Time had whittled me away.
Small as I was to begin with,
I had no
weight left
to tie me
to the earth.
Now I lay in a box on cold marble.
The empty dome of the Capital
pretends to
be heaven above.
A river of faces turns around me,
gawking,
weeping, murmuring.
I see them all.
Maybe those old Druids,
pagan
though they were,
were right
about the air
between the
living and the dead
being thin
this day.
More likely that Sweet Chariot
has parked
somewhere
and let me
linger a while
just so I
could see this
before
swinging low
to carry me
home.
It makes me proud alright.
I was always proud.
Humility before the Lord
may be a
virtue,
but
humility before the master
was the
lash that kept
Black folks
down.
We grew pride as a back bone.
All of this is nice enough.
But let me tell you,
since I’ve
been gone,
I’ve seen
some foolishness
and heard
plenty, too.
They talk all kinds of foolishness
about that
day in Montgomery.
All that falderal about my feet being tired.
It wasn’t my soles that ached.
It was my soul.
It wasn’t any sudden accident either.
No sir, I prayed at the AME church.
I went to the Highland School
for rabble
rousers and trouble makers.
I met with the brothers at the NAACP
who were a
little afraid
of an
uppity woman.
Another thing.
That day was not my whole life.
There were 42 years before
and fifty
more after.
There was plenty of loving and grieving,
sweat and
laughter,
and always
speaking my mind
very
plainly, thank you.
Sure, there were parades.
There were medals and speeches, too.
But there were also long lonely days.
Once, up in Detroit,
I was beat
half to death
in my own
home
by a wild
eyed thug.
He didn’t care if I was
the Mother
of Civil Rights.
He never heard of Dr. King
or the bus
boycott.
All he wanted was my Government money.
so he could
go out
and hop
himself up some more.
That a young Black man
could do
that to an old woman,
any old
woman,
near broke
my heart.
That I could step out my door
and see
copies of him
lolling on
every street corner
made me
mad.
We may have changed the world,
like they
kept saying.
We didn’t change it enough.
We didn’t keep the hope from
being
sucked out of the city.
This business in the Capital
is alright,
I suppose.
And it was nice enough to be brought
back to
Montgomery, too,
laid out in
the chapel
of my home
church.
But clearly some folks have
gone out of
their minds.
Why, in Houston the other day,
before a
World Series game,
they had
the crowd stand silent
in my
memory.
It was a sea of white faces
who paid a
seamstress’s
wages for a
month for a seat.
It seems the only Black faces
were on the
field
or roaming
the aisles
selling hot
dogs.
And, Lord, the two-faced politicians
that came
out of the woodwork!
The governor of Alabama
cried crocodile
tears
as if he
would not be
happy to
have
a White
Citizen’s Council
membership
card in his wallet
if it would
get him some votes.
Somebody roused George W. from his stupor,
told him in
short easy words
who I was,
and shoved
him out
in front of
the microphones
to eulogize
me.
He looked uncomfortable and confused.
I understand he had other things
on his
mind.
What these politicians had in mind
was patting
black folks on the head.
“See,” they say, “Mrs. Parks and Dr. King
took care
of everything.
They asked for freedom and we gave it to them
a long,
long time ago.
What more can you ask?
Now stand over there out of the way
so we can
get down to the business
of going
after real money.”
It plain tires me out.
Little children, Black and white,
who study
me in school,
do not
think the job is over.
Your own bus seat must be won every day.
And while you are at it,
have the
driver change the route.
—Patrick Mufin
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