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In this critical election year when so many of us feel that democracy itself is on the ballot, the yearly International Black Theater Festival aims to help spur voter registration. Partnering with leading voting rights organization Democracy North Carolina, the Festival is hosting a staged reading of the Gospel musical Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom. The performance is free and coupled with a push for voter registration.
The musical tells the true story of Lynda Blackmon Lowery, as told by her 2015 memoir. Lowery is also being honored by the festival. She was the youngest person to march all 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery in 1965—-a voting rights march led by John Lewis, which is credited with being the decisive force causing LBJ to sponsor the Voting Rights Act of that year.
A spokesperson for the production says, “Lowery’s story is brought to life in this theatrical play infused with gospel music and freedom songs. Blackmon Lowery recounts her youth in the segregated South – from being savagely beaten on Bloody Sunday to triumphantly marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis to the Alabama State Capital.”
Portraying Blackmon in this production will be Tony Award-winning actress and filmmaker Tonya Pinkins. Pinkins is no stranger to activism and artivism. Indeed, the first time she stood against an injustice was when she was seven years old and on Fort Leonard Wood Army Base in Missouri. Her film Red Pill is part of her ongoing work to use her art to make change.
Among her many works of note are the 20 one-act plays she has written and directed called TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION OF WOMYN.
Here, Picture This Post (PTP) asks Tonya Pinkins (TP) to reflect on her role in performer the Lowery story and the impact of this work on herself and what she hopes all will take away from the performance.
(PTP) Can you describe for our readers how the book impacted you emotionally at first and now again as you delve into it in more depth for your reading at the International Black Theater Festival event?
(TP) I am inspired and astonished by the faith of the parents and the trust, willingness and courage of their children to stand-up knowing they would subjected to physical suffering, beatings, cattle prods and jail. Yet, they did it and for many days.
I was raised in Chicago. I was too young to know about the march while it was happening. I would have learned about during Black History Month at school. And, of course, from movies like Ava DuVernay’s SELMA.
I am a part of the first generation of African Americans who have benefited from the struggle and suffering of the Civil Rights Movement and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. I attended integrated Magnet schools Robert A. Black and Whitney M. Young High School in Chicago. This would not have been possible were it not for the Civil Rights Movement and Actions.
How does Lowery’s book speak to you as an activist and artivist through the lens of your personal history as an activist and artivist?
One of my teachers, Dr Greg Carr, says that the dominant culture has a modi operandi, “Recruit, Ignore, Destroy” rinse and repeat. I would add to Dr Carr’s statement that the devil is always working overtime to adapt its strategies. So getting the right to vote was an enormous fight and challenge, they ignored and sought to destroy us on the way to gaining that right. But now, in my humble opinion, we have been recruited. And in the recruitment stage they see you as on their side and in their camp and they reward you for not challenging their status quo.
But Black people still are not as FREE as white people in America. Just as the 14th amendment gave us equal rights but it was another hundred years near bout until we could exercise the right to vote, we still cannot fully exercise that right. For example, Louisiana, Mississippi , Alabama, and possibly Texas and Kentucky may still have larger Black populations who are of voting age but many of those people cannot and do not exercise their right to vote. And the democratic party is not financially investing in getting the votes from Black in those states.
Gary Chambers said, “It’s because then the democrats would have to acknowledge that they are the party of the Black Americans”. The Democratic Party is still trying to seduce White voters even though as a majority white voters have not voted for a Democratic president since Johnson. The very nature of the “representation” dilutes our votes. Then the Electoral College dilutes our votes further. Through gerrymandering on top of that. I think the dominant culture has recruited us to focus most of our time and energy on “voting’ and they like that because they have successfully diluted the power of our vote.
What are your feelings about the importance of voter registration now and the work of the International Black Theater Festival to materially support voter registration?
I applaud National Black Theater support of Voter Registration and I say YES, AND we must vote not only in the presidential election but in our local elections. Like Aaron Burr, when we see a seat that can be taken, we must rise up and take it no matter what party the seat “belongs’ too.
I have never thought of voting as superfluous. I do believe that CITIZEN’S UNITED has eroded the value of the vote in favor of money and SCOTUS decisions have furthered the power of money to buy political power and will.
We have more than our vote. When we march, and protest. We have yet to mobilize our most critical power in a General Strike. I spend time in Panama. And the Indigenous people there will shut the country down when the government does things like raise the price for rice, beans , chicken, gas and impinge on their daily living. We have much to learn from our Latin American neighbors.
How do you feel the theater world can help activating young and other voters?
Theater is a wonderful way to model what is possible in the world. I’d love to see some plays about the power of General Strikes.I highly recommend people visiting New York to see the Broadway musical SUFFS which is about the Suffragist Movement.
Read more Picture This Post stories about Tonya Pinkins.
For details on the July 31, free, staged reading of Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom visit the North Carolina Black Repertory Website.
Images of Tonya Pinkins courtesy of Tonya Pinkins.
