 So we'll do a call and response, and this song, I learned through going to these various meetings. And it's written by Bertha Hoover, and I learned it as an anthem of Sling, would you mind if you can sing. For me, it's an experience with giving an affirmation to the idea and the people and standing with each other in the spirit. So we can do a call and response, just that one part. We've been buted and we've been scorned. We've been buted and we've been scorned. We've been talked about shows you. We've been talked about shows you. But we've all been free. I believe he died. I believe he died for the cause. I believe he had equality. Just noticing how today is my grandmother's birthday. Yes, Roseanne Frencha O'Neill, my paternal grandmother. And so I was just thinking about absent and whose name doesn't appear on any of his FST document, probably, but how she would have been a woman. She is a woman of the FST. Because in the ways that she and my mother, her name is Marilyn Norton. It's also not on this panel. And she would have been a bookkeeper or an accountant as best as I can piece together of various sorts of FST. And so I was thinking about them, like my grandmother. She would have been a teacher, at least my dad, and someone who gave meals and the kind of intellectual vision that you get around the kitchen table. And how that is to me so much of the story of the contributions of women in the movement. Their presence is felt, and the impact of their work is what we are the benefactors of. But we often don't know their names, and the genius and strategy of their work often goes unacknowledged. At least by people who weren't directly and authentically connected to them. And so I just wanted to share that honor to a couple of the women of the Civil Rights movement that I feel connected to, and the women of FST. And I feel connected to and make them more public for others. I can also think about Charlene. Charlene was not here, who I think was a tremendous force in the Free Southern Theater. And I hope that we'll get to hear more about her work, even in her absence. And finally, before I give it to y'all, I just wanted to say that oftentimes the presence of women does not necessarily mean the notice of the impact, not only of our work, but the ways that racism or white supremacy or oppression impact black women. You know, like we often think about the consequences of carrying through with the commitment to challenge white supremacy that happened in the movement, and then the fruit of the movement like FST, as things, consequences of what happened to black men. But there are consequences and benefits that are specifically rooted in the ways of being of women. And that I would like to just remember and acknowledge and notice. So, just thank you all. Would you introduce yourselves? Jeannie Johnson. And would you say your relation? FST is from Mason Office. And sometimes in New Orleans. But I was in New York. All right. I'm Jeannie Boyko Johnson. Most people who knew me way back when he opened me was Jeannie Boyko. I came to FST because I was a SNCC. I started working with SNCC when I was a sophomore in college in Atlanta. I went to my dream college with Stolman. But it's not to be such a dream. Stolman was really a good school. I grew up very poor and I wasn't used to being treated like I was poor. Because I didn't think I knew I was poor when I went to Stolman. But Stolman was enough. But I became involved with SNCC then. And I thank Manga because I had to know that there was some good people at Stolman. And I was told about SNCC. And so a number of us started working with sit-ins. And we got arrested of course. And we were proud of that. Except I was on scholarship. And so I was told to be the stop on work with the civil rights movement. Or I could not be a really good school. So I decided to leave. And I worked full-time with SNCC. I worked full-time with SNCC for a few years. Went to New York to finish my education. And because I knew John and he knew I was the starving student who needed work. I started working in the FST fundraising office. Which was a great experience I have to say. Thank you. So everybody will just do an introduction. That'd be great. And then we'll get to the question. Thank you Doris. I started in the civil rights movement back when I was 16. I joined the NAACP from New York. And my father faced discrimination on his job. And so I'd say he was a civil rights warden too. Fought discrimination in the civil service as a New York State employee. He and two of the others founded one organization to combat discrimination. In the New York State employee service. And they got Constance Faker Motley, a long time returning to take their case. And the only years they did win their case. So I had that example. And I had the example of my elder, my grand-parents. And be around your elders. There'll be things that you know that help you discover your path. And there'll be things that you don't know. But it's in the spirit of their presence. And that will help you move on. I discovered that my grandmother on my mother's side. And her oldest brother were charter members of the NAACP in the 1920s. In Bangor, Maine. And I didn't know that. But somehow rather the spirit. Because I don't think that she knew. But it came to us at any rate. So I was a part of students at Hunter College. 1960. Who reacted to what was happening with the demonstrations. Sit-ins, et cetera. And we, a group of us decided to go to North Carolina. And talk to students who were involved in organizing SNCC. And then I went to Albany, Georgia in 1962 in the summer. After I graduated from college and I was teaching. And I went there just for a week. And ended up staying for the rest of the summer. Because I got involved. After that, they asked me to raise money. To raise clothes, clothing, canned goods for Albany, Georgia movement. I had Bob Moses come to be the keynote speaker of the fundraiser. And he said, you need to come to Mississippi to work on our adult literacy project. Which we're starting. I told him, no way. I'm not going. And a month later, I said I would go. And I saw the demonstrations. How the police were reacting with fire hoses. Billy clubs, dogs, et cetera. And I said, if the people there can do that. The least I can do is go to Mississippi for a year and work on the literacy project. So then the rest is history. That's where we, John and I met. John and I met. And we started talking about the free Southern theater. I'm here because I was one of the early New Orleans members of FST. And I always kind of qualify that by saying I was a part of the writing arm of the FST. Which later became known as Black Art South. And in the early days, I was very much mentored by Tom Dent. And my point of entry is very different. I was a very sheltered Catholic all-girl high school kid who was pulled into FST. By an upperclassman who had read my work in our school newspaper and said, you've got to come to this workshop. This is something you have to do. And I'm awfully glad she did that. And it literally influenced my life and the voice of my work. And I'm a poet. I did not march. I did not sit in. But it was a part of the cultural arts movement. I guess I'm the only one sitting up here who is not, I was not a part of FST. My name is Dorothe Smith Simmons. Everybody knows me as Dodie. And back in the 60s, I was Dodie Smith. How did I become involved with FST? Well, at the age of 15, my sister says 16, but I was a couple of weeks from 16. So I was 15 when I became a member of the NAACP Council, not because I wanted to, because I was interested in civil rights. I wanted to go out dancing. And that's what my sister, Dorothy, was amongst the black students that redesegregated LSUNO. And from that group of students, they formed the NAACP U-Council. One night, I overheard a conversation. My sister was talking to one of the NAACP U-Council members, and they were talking about, they were going to the golden pheasant. And I said, mm-hmm. Mama told her when the meeting is over, come straight home. So I blackmailed my sister. I told her she didn't take me to the NAACP meeting, pay my dues and pay my bus fare. I was going to tell Mama. And she did. And we went to the golden pheasant. And after, for 25 cents, we got six tunes on the jukebox and danced the night away. Mama said, why y'all coming home late? Oh, we missed the bus. The bus was late. So later, while I was still a member of the NAACP U-Council, Jerome Smith, who was here earlier today, and Rudy Lombard, who was the chairman of New Orleans Corps, came to one of the NAACP U-Council meetings and asked us to help them in their sit-in and boycott of Woolworths and Macquarries on Canal Street. So we did. After a couple of weeks of sitting in and picketing the core, one of the senior adult members of the NAACP came to our meeting and said, if you go to jail, we will not get you out. So not being one to be told what I can and can't do, myself along with several other members, all females, got up and walked out of the NAACP U-Council meeting and joined New Orleans Corps and we became the backbone of Corps. And I'll tell you later how I became really involved with Free Southern Theater. Hello, everyone. I am Rosie Thomas. I am a mother, a grandmother, and a great, probably a great grandmother. Everything I've ever done in my life is because of my children. They've been my battery, my source of energy, and everything that I hold dear. I got involved with FST because I'm radical. That's just a fact that, like, everybody know me, know I'm radical. I'm unusual. I'm unique and they needed some of that. So I figured I'd come in and lighten up the place for them, give them some joy along with everything else they had going on. Now, really, I joined the FST in 1973. And I joined because I was a confused, radical, politically radical person who wanted to know more about my feelings politically. You know, I was all over the place. I didn't have any sense of direction for my political understandings. And I knew that in New Orleans FST was known to have very good resources for guiding misguided politician type people. And that's what I considered myself at the time. Now I'm just a little old lady and loving it. Oh, please, child, I will be a radical in the grave. Yes, I will. But anyway, I joined the FST in 1973, enjoyed it very much, became a member, became one of the workers of the FST. I worked in the office, couldn't spell a lick, but I worked in the office and I answered telephones and stuff like that. Then I joined the Actors Workshop. The Actors Workshop is where I learned and honed my chops, my skills for the stage, film, or whatever. I am good at it, trust me. But I became good at it because I had good people guiding me. I had John O'Neill, I had Jakula Chajawa, I had Ben Spillman and many other fine teachers of the art of theater. I got very good at it and I became sort of like a little lightweight, you know, star of the FST. Plus, I learned how to paint, I learned how to make costumes, makeup, I could do hair, or whatever else was required. As a matter of fact, I starred in productions and had to go in the back and get the paint off of me before I went on stage. That's how much work you learn to do, you learn to do it all. And that makes you a very appreciative and well-rounded performer when you know how hard everyone else works to make a production, a production. It makes you more conscious of what you're supposed to do. But the most important thing is it gives you the impetus to make sure that you put across the message that the writer of whatever production you're doing, you are or feel compelled to put forth that writer's message. And that's what I learned about acting as a member of the Free Southern Theater. But in terms of my politic, I learned the same thing, that everything is political. And it is important that you take a political stance in this life. Some people want to say, well, do this politic thing. Everything you do is political. When you buy a loaf of bread, you are taking a political stance because you're choosing one brand over another. And thank you very much. So introductions. Bertha, if you'll introduce yourself, then we'll split time five minutes each so we get a half hour together. And then they'll have a half hour. I'll pose questions after you speak. And we'll talk about that when we get to it. Okay, I'm Bertha O'Neill and I worked for the Free Southern Theater between 1969 and 1971. So I didn't have a long history with the theater, but for me it was a crucial time in my life because it was my very first real job, you know, besides babysitting neighborhood children and that sort of thing. I worked as a secretary, so I wasn't exactly an artist. When I started the Free Southern Theater, it was sort of a trial by fire because they were involved in things that I had not been exposed to. So when I came there, first of all, I didn't like get a lot of direction. They say, okay, these are the things you need to do and people kind of went away. And okay, you need to get these file cabinets together and all of that. And so being somebody who is always like to read, I read a lot. And I learned a lot about the Free Southern Theater because everything I found, I read it first. So I learned a lot that way and I also learned a lot from the people who actually worked there. Well, at that time, there were a lot of people from New York, so I guess I came kind of at the tail end of that crew and a lot of these revolutionaries who had their ideas about how black people should be and were quick to inform me when I was not exactly that way. But it was a learning experience. I didn't always accept my lessons well and sometimes I kind of resisted and fought and some I never accepted. But anyway, I think that it was an important time for the city, the city of New Orleans because I think it was sort of new at that time to the city. And there were a lot of people who were involved and a lot of people who might have been doing some people that I knew from my childhood or whatever that I saw who might have been doing something else had they not been doing that. And as well as, you know, well, I might have been doing something else that was maybe less useful. I also came to kind of feel, I think I kind of grew some more self-esteem because I felt like I was like young and inexperienced and didn't know a lot of stuff and so didn't feel equal to the task and just being involved in it. And like Frozine said, you know, this was a small organization. So you end up doing a lot of things that you might not do in some other kind of organization including I did just a teeny bit of acting thanks to Tom Dent's insistence. It was not me but, you know, it was a good experience and so... Thank you. Okay, so that's everybody. Everybody, this is us. So we came up with some prompt questions but much like in a story circle you should really say what's most important to say even if that's not an answer to the prompt question. They're really literally prompts. So hopefully they've helped you to think about stories or things that are important to you. So I'm going to read all three of the questions and then I'm going to ask Dr. Derby if you would go first and then we'll go to your left and back down here because it makes sense to start at the beginning. And so I'm going to read the questions and then I'm going to do something that's a little obnoxious that I learned from the story circle process which is to put the timer on from the phone. So you'll hear a song when it's time, when you're at... Mama Doty said, you got five minutes so I'm going to time you at four minutes so you get a minute to wrap up your thought. Okay, so here the... and we're doing that just so that we can share time equally. The first prompt is when you say Free Southern Theater, what's the story that comes to your mind? The second is what's the story of where you felt most changed or most challenged during your work with the Free Southern Theater? Or when did you feel the most scared or the most loved during your time with the Free Southern Theater? Dr. Derby? Well, you can answer one for all or something else. Give me the first question again please. When you say Free Southern Theater, what's the story that comes to your mind? Well, I guess the coming together, the process of coming together with John and Gilbert, Moses and talking back and forth, deliberating about what we thought was missing there and how... what could we do? Given with our background, our interest in the arts and theater, being a part of civil rights what could we do to establish some kind of change? What tools did we have? Who would we work with? How could we establish something that would make a difference that would help in making democracy a reality more so for the people that we were interacting with as a part of the civil rights movement? The challenge was how are we going to do it? Where are we going to get the resources? How are we going to draw upon the skills and talents that we had within us and within the people that were around us? How would we just... what were the baby steps we had to take? What would our roles be? I know I had my vision of what my role was or roles would be and someone mentioned how you only... some people want you to walk one line I was already walking several lines and I wasn't going backwards so I walked the lines that were basic to me and my upbringing and it wasn't about doing things that somebody else thought I should do it was about being true to my spirit and my skills and talents and so that's what I thought I would bring to whatever we were trying to accomplish and I was flexible, I had a lot of skills, I was already a teacher and I pretty much had my own vision and to a certain extent our visions overlapped and that's where we came together to decide this is what we're going to do but there were a lot of challenges and we had to look within ourselves and to the extent that we looked within ourselves and the people around us we were able to accomplish more I felt as opposed to looking way outside of us to areas that were far into us but thinking that there was a rainbow somewhere else We still have time What's the other question? When did you feel the most scared or the most loved during your time with the Free Southern family? Well of course the scared part was all the other things that were going on with the civil rights movement which the Free Southern family was just was a part of that and John and I were both working with SNCC and Gilbert too so the scary part was you didn't know what was going to happen if you were driving from Tougaloo to Jackson we were still working with SNCC in COFO, Council of Federated Organizations as field secretaries going out doing voter registration participating in day-to-day activities meeting other SNCC folk and being involved in what SNCC was doing on a day-to-day basis We didn't know when some of our friends might come back after being chased in the car if you rode in an integrated car you had to be careful you didn't know when the police might come if you were going back and forth to Jackson or whatever you were going to be involved in so the bigger picture was the scary part but you knew that you committed to doing what you needed to do and that while it loomed out there that threat you still were going to do what you needed to do I thought that music was going to come out Oh I didn't think that was the music May I read? I did prepare something when I put a panel together for the Furious Flower Conference on the Black Arts Movement in the Deep South and so there are brief comments I don't know that it will be inside of five minutes but I think it's important to talk about points of entry and so this is a personal recollection of the Black Arts Movement in New Orleans during the Black Arts Movement commonly known as BAM of the 60s and 70s when the most recognized and lauded cultural activity was in New York a less recognized faction of the movement was thriving in the Deep South and in New Orleans in particular home to many writers and aspiring writers of which I was one interest in community theater was on the rise the Free Southern Theater had an office here in 1968 and regularly staged written pieces by Black playwrights and they staged these productions in the heart of the cities impoverished and deteriorating neighborhoods the Lower Ninth Ward and the Central City FST conducted writing and acting workshops that resulted in a calendar of live performances in 1968 I wrote for my high school newspaper which also published my poetry an upper classman after reading my work insisted that I attend a community workshop with her we traveled to a former storefront on Louisa Street down in the Ninth Ward up to that time my work was a reflective, meditative, almost prayerful inward turned examination of self place and circumstance came through the workshop process concern and anger that grew from struggle for civil rights and human dignity and the continued lack of opportunities for Black people fueled much of the writing of our literature it took time and an almost immediate change of mindset for me to adjust to the level of discussion as well as how message focused everything that past workshop grade was I had not marched in any protest or sat in any sit-ins my understanding of the civil rights movement was adolescent and academic my ability to participate in the burgeoning Black power movement was limited and unlikely I was a teenager who attended a recently integrated all girls Catholic high school many of the FST workshop participants were political activists who belong to groups whose work involved intense and sometimes dangerous community organizing workshop poetry topics centered on issues of economic depravity racial oppression, police brutality, neglected or abandoned children and families and spousal responsibilities there was also an abundance of love poetry work that survived the grueling workshop process was often read to live audiences knowing that the work had to be performance ready heightened our interest in using rhythmic forms that match the message, engaged audiences and provoke to thought the pinnacle of success was a piece that actually spurred action irreverence was the cultural revolutionaries nectar we had little if any regard for established forms no interest in reading or imitating Shakespeare or any other icon of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American literature we believed with a quiet certainty that we were forever changing American writing we embarked on our journey with Augusto a fully patron-supported explorers sailing into new worlds although we paid our own tabs we re-appropriated language taking it back for the people average people who were excluded from most literary dialogues people who needed life-affirming and possibly life-changing bulletins mana in an increasingly hostile world forced to pry open its locked doors and closets of oppression in the vernacular of the street often with accompanying profanity real life stories were rendered in tongues that needed no unraveling for clarity use of the communal voice was common accepted and expected preachy by choice we had an unabashedly clear and unapologetic sense of audience we wrote for and about black people all people of the African diaspora wherever they might be when I hear the word FST what comes to mind is in 1963 sitting in the southern regional office of the congress of racial equality corps three young movement-type people walking into my office they were down the hall at the law firm of Colin Douglas and Eli visiting these three people were John O'Neill Gil Moses and Denise Nicholas they came in and introduced themselves and at that time I didn't know anything about theater I'd never been to a live performance in my life even though it was always my intention to be the next Dorothy Dandridge until FST came to town the following year in 64 and I went to when they were during the production of Pearl to Victorious at St. John Institution of Baptist Church on Jackson Avenue right around the corner from the southern region the office of corps I would go after work and was intrigued by Richard Shetner and John O'Neill John always often forgotten his lines and I knew his lines by heart when I went to the theater I didn't know that it took all of that to be an actor my dreams of being Dorothy Dandridge was over it was over before that because I'm originally from Mississippi but I grew up here in New Orleans and people say why you talk like that girl you talk some funny so I didn't talk so I knew I would never you know reach my goal of being the next Dorothy Dandridge because I did not talk and when I got older I talked you know I just talked too much sometime as Wendy would tell you and the next thing you say Free Southern Theater going to all of the rehearsals going to plays I saw so many plays in white America does man help man meeting people like Roscoe Murray Levy Big Daddy Cynthia McBeers Grace Brooks I think was her name Joe Perry and Seven Darden and going with after rehearsal going to a party at Seven Darden's house apartment in the French Quarter on St. Peter Street and going hearing Gil Moses play guitar and sing then going downstairs and next door to preservation hall which I wind up working at a few years later and like I say and one because I have never been to a live theater performance in my life when they came to Desire area I grew up in Desire their office when they moved to the Night Ward on Louisa Street that was the building that used to be a grocery store in the front and the cleanest on the side I lived across the Florida Avenue canal right off Louisa Street on Metropolitan and when I went to the portrait reading I was amazed that so many young people and I remember and I saw in the picture in the FST book Big Daddy holding the microphone to this young boy and I was amazed that these young kids were picking up on what was going on and I thought that was great because when I was coming out we didn't have anything like that and so I just became involved in going to the production knowing all of the people when I started you have a minute okay well we could talk about that later but one of the questions that Wendy asked is when were you most afraid well in Bugaloo, Louisiana there were two LCDC lawyers who had come to town and the Free Southern Theater were appearing in Bugaloo but they didn't know how to get there I said oh I'll take you breaking the first rule of going to Bugaloo call the deacons for defense and justice and let them know that you're coming well I didn't we got there okay and Bob Hicks read me the riot act but on the way home they formed the line of cars the deacons got in the front the car I was in with the LCDC lawyers were in back of Tom Dent and when the deacons are driving they do a hundred and they don't stop but nobody well I don't know how Tom got lost but because we were following Tom we also wound up lost and following us was the Klan and the Klan ran into the side of the car that I was in and I thought oh my god I'm not going to make it this time but we got away from them but they caught up with us and hit us one more time in the back before we were able to get away from them and that was my most frightening time other than being a freedom rider and being involved in civil rights activities that first question what was the first thing you said Randy when you think of Free Southern Theater what comes to your mind um growth that's where I grew um the other one the next one my most challenging experiences was learning to do the many jobs that are required to not only do theatrical work but to do political work you know you have to really understand why you're doing what you're doing where you have to go and whether or not you have the courage internal strength to just do what you have to do no matter how frightened you are no matter how you know incompetent you might feel you still have to try and I think that for me was what it was now the last one was being afraid well we were on tour and we had just visited the Ohio State University campus and we were on our way out headed back south and we were in Dayton Ohio I remember and we were parked in this little area and pretty soon we had these cars following us and I remember Jesse Morrell said oh oh we're in trouble what kind of trouble and then they started talking about the Klu Klux Klan now I had been in Louisiana all my life I didn't know that I was afraid of the Klan until Jesse said the Klu Klux Klan and suddenly things start happening in my little body and things start going oh shucks you know like what's gonna happen now are we gonna am I gonna make it back to my children all of those things start going through my head but that was my most frightening experience with the FST because I don't have a lot of fear of many things but what I want to say here is that the Free Southern Theater was an opinion one of the better things that New Orleans had to offer to black people in particular and particularly poor black people black people who had never seen a live play I remember they used to come and say when are you all gonna do another movie stage movie you know that's how they knew it they knew it as a stage movie and I remember the many times John and I would get into these humbugs about content of the plays that we did you know because you know I tried I wanted to stay in the the the parameters of the neighborhood that we were in and John wanted to go past that and so we used to get into a lot of John and I but the point the main point I want to say is that for here right now is to John and Chikula and everybody who gave to the Free Southern Theater I'm grateful because you gave me an opportunity to have a career that I never thought I'd have you gave me an opportunity to meet people that I never thought I'd meet you gave me a chance to find out that I am an actress and a damn good one and I appreciate that I guess when I think of FST and the things that I remember the most about FST it's around fundraising when I was in New York FST did the Friends of the FST and I think Brock Peters was and his wife Dee Dee there was a big benefit that was very successful and it was called soul food soul food at the war dove which was really wasn't soul food but they tried but it was my first introduction to fundraising really and I don't remember who ran the office but I know you hired for that event a fundraiser Hannah Weinstein who was this feisty woman shorter than me who I think riled everybody but knew exactly what she was doing and taught us so much she was a real taskmaster and we pulled off this really big event I don't know it must have been what three four hundred people do you remember yeah it was huge lots of people came I think Bill Cosby was the moderator Lena Horne was there Muhammad Ali was there I think almost every black actor or actress who had some kind of consciousness was there and not just black there were a lot of whites there too I can remember meeting Eva Gardner it was a really big event and we worked very hard for it and a lot of money was raised I have to say that John has played a really important part of my life in this sense and you probably don't even think about this it was important to me when I was living in New York you asked me to if someone that you knew from New Orleans could stay at my house, my apartment it was Roxy Wright Roxy came and stayed with me she was working for Family Health Foundation at the time I had no intentions of moving to New Orleans I just finished on a college and so she asked me what was I doing I said I'm taking a few courses in public health but I don't really know what I'm going to do I think I'm going to continue school she said why don't you try the Tulane School of Public Health there's this scholarship that's available in Family Health Foundation why don't you apply for it I said I'll do that to be perfectly honest I had never even heard of Tulane I mean I was from Jacksonville, Florida a little girl I didn't know a lot so I did apply and did everything I was supposed to do and got the scholarship and I was amazed so I moved down here I planned to be here for two years and I think I met my husband who has left the room there at the Free Southern Theater at some event we were having there and we've been married 38 years so John, you're responsible my when I think about the theater too I never thought as long as the theater and SNCC were one thing to me I never thought of them as separate entities until much later because everybody I knew with the theater was a part of SNCC but I had some wonderful times there and grew a lot, learned a lot I'm like, frozen, I learned a lot of stuff and I can understand where you're coming from about being thrown in the situation the same thing happened to me with SNCC they just give you a task and you're expected to do it and you learn I had a job of trying to find scholarships I knew absolutely nothing about that I knew absolutely nothing about grant writing was very bad at it and it stayed on my mind forever I became a grant writer because I wanted to be good at something I had done so poorly when I was a kid and became a very successful writer when I think of the Free Southern Theater I think of a lot of different things because when I came there in 69 it seems like a lot was it was right after the Waldorf it was still a big talk because it was a big thing but I thought of it as I thought about the I guess the community work they did like they would go to the senior citizens homes and do things for the seniors and different places like that there was also of course the plays I don't know the 9th Ward part so much but I knew better Well Mero Street which was mainly the office and Dryad Street so there was also the performance part of it that I had watched and did little supportive work for also there was like a political part to it with the newspapers that were published political newspapers so I remember being like late while we were trying to get all of these newspapers out then of course there was also in Combo the portrait magazine so that was a big part of it too so it was just a lot of different things going on so for me it was like a lot of exposure to you to me so I was kind of when I had time in all but mostly I didn't have time because it was a job where you just had so much to do and had to wear so many hats and as we said before you didn't get like a lot of okay here's a new job and let me train you for it so you were busy trying to figure out how to keep up and how to get it all done so and it was also a coming of age experience for me well John tells people he hired me but he really didn't hire me when I started working for the Free Southern Theater I was really hired by Bobby Bobby Jones John was kind of like he continued to be on the road a lot and so he was somewhere else so I would talk to him on the phone like two weeks he would call in almost every day and get his messages and things like that and so I met him later on but it had a big influence and I think for most people especially I would say maybe most people but I know for New Orleanians that it was something that had a really big influence on our lives and for me coming of age during that time so that was my experience with the theater that I don't fortunately I guess unfortunately I don't know I don't have the experience of having a real fearful experience I was not really a part of the civil rights movement and I didn't really see that in New Orleans as a matter of fact I mean you would hear about sit-ins at the Woolworths or something like that but it was not something that I participated I didn't even go to like an integrated school where you had to fight that so I didn't have I've heard lots of stories from most people who involved from the earlier days but personally I didn't have that kind of experience You still have about a minute so do you want to talk any about the contemporary movement? Well right now I guess John is still a part in a way but after I retired I came back to New Orleans and been in a supportive role I've always felt like I was in a supportive role you know I was because I thought of this as a theater company and I thought of myself as sort of a behind-the-scenes person well I guess I still am that you know so you know he writes or he wrote or whatever and I will read his stuff and give him an opinion on it and sometimes he would accept it mostly not but so then as now you know I think of myself as being in a supportive role in doing whatever whatever I'm asked to do or whatever there was a time when you know I would go into the office and try to help out a little too but I never did a lot of that after retirement so right now that's where I am well I thought thank you thank you everybody we thought we'd save this time for people to ask questions or share thoughts that we could then respond to we have about a half an hour so unless someone has a burning desire of something else they'd like to say we can move into that all right so the mic is right there and we know that these are some of the very important women of the free southern theater but not all of the women of the free southern theater so if you know stories of some of those other folks please share them or if you have questions of these geniuses here then go on and ask that we'll wait sometimes it just takes a minute thank you all this is really great I want to go back to something that got raised at the morning panel a little bit about kind of when did consciousness about gender issues or did consciousness about gender issues come into the dynamics that you all experienced in a theater in a movement that was radical in some ways but it's what was said this morning that in other ways not as radical to do with gender well earlier John raised the issue that he and Gilbert were looking at my role as being one that was quote may I guess female oriented make the coffee and might do the papers but I did not have that experience really in my life in growing up at my home my father he was a provider my mother was at home but we worked as a team we my father was a cabinet maker in the evenings and on the weekends we were important part of an extended family on both sides my paternal grandparents lived in New York for a while we worked together we did house projects together paint the house I used to work with my father when he was in the basement working making cabinets and I would do things to help him so I didn't have I always thought of a family as a team and that's the way I thought of as FST and SNCC and so whatever they thought just sort of rolled over me I didn't pay any attention I just did what I was going to do what I thought I should do what was needed at that time for what we were doing the civil rights movement and so and that was really the way I operated throughout the civil rights movement there are some things that the guys that were doing I just didn't get involved I just went on and did what I thought what I should be doing and what was necessitated so and the guys often sought my help when I thought there was something that needed to be done a project or something I would put the idea out of what we needed to do and whoever responded and it often was men they wanted to work with me and they wanted to work in terms of ideas as well as skills and talents like I was working with the two other guys that were we were putting on folk festivals so they had their roles I had my role so I really wasn't into being aware that much of men saying that we had to do certain things and that was just effective for me and that was I think that was the way that a lot of women civil rights movement were we had to work on multiple roles and whatever had to be done had to be done so that's I think that a lot of women that I was associated with like in the literacy project Kofo Head Start Liberty House I was always working on multiple roles some of them might have been what women did but a lot of it was just what needed to be done and whoever was available was there and the men relied on us to do certain levels of things that needed to be done I agree that in New Orleans core we were equal there were more women in New Orleans than men but they didn't say because you're a woman you have to do this you have to do that we just did whatever had to be done and there was no male part and female part that you had to do and if you saw something that needed to be done you just did it and you worked together as a team and that's what we did in core I just like to speak to this from a point of view of a woman with children I had small children and I was single in many instances for me it was difficult in the beginning because I didn't have babysitters and things like that a lot of times I had to figure out how I was going to get me and my children to the theater putting them up later than maybe they were you know I wanted them to be up so that I could do rehearsals and all of these kinds of things in that respect it was difficult but in terms of the actual actual work the thing that I found at the community at the free southern theater was that we were we were all expected to just like she said do the work and sometimes you might find some chauvinistic thing happening on the part of an individual who I will not name but we were able to work around that and it didn't become a big deal so for me gender was sort of a situation but not really and in terms of the movement itself I feel like women were often time the headliners of the movement but were not given the top billing but in terms of the actual work I think most of the actual work of the civil rights movement was done by women we didn't always like get recognition for it but we were the we were the backbone women were the backbone of the civil rights movement the men did all the traveling but we did all the work but getting back to the women being the backbone and I think of the freedom ride when they continue and Dr. King was asked to go on the ride and he said he couldn't because he was on probation well it was 18 year old New Orleans and Julia Aaron that say I'm on probation too and I tell Julia now you weren't on probation she and Jerome had just got out of jail and she was out on bail but not probation and when James Farmer was going back was supposed to go back to New York because he had been away from the office so long it was Daris Jean Castle we called Jim Farmer Uncle Jim and she said you're going Uncle Jim aren't you and she said that with tears in her eyes and he said get my bag and he got on the bus and went to Jackson so women played a very important role in the civil rights movement all the way back to Irene Morgan and people like that you know Rosa Park Fannie Lou Hamer all strong women and the divine and there was no you can't do this because you're a woman you did it anyway because you were part of the movement and you knew the importance of the action and whether a man did it or not it had to be done and I think of when we were doing test rides after the ICC ruling it was mainly women who went on the ride in Poplarville Mississippi there were five of us females in one male when the only time we had more males than females is in McComb, Mississippi where we had three males but Jerome Smith was acting as the observer Alice Thompson and myself were the females George Raymond and Thomas Valentine were the two males and you know we took the beating just like the males did and that was one time that I thought my life had ended at 18 and a half I think a lot of what happened is the women went to the meetings they did the work they did a lot of the organizing work they cooked, they cleaned they kept the babies they made the babies and they kept them so that was a lot of what happened and a lot of absences throughout the years are attributable to that that women were taking care of their babies and not being out on the front line but making sure that the home front was safe and warm and I can't overestimate the importance of that I think we all have had times in our lives when we were dealing with women's work and that's really how it was categorized I know in my case I was often the only woman in the later years of the writing workshop it was a strange position to be in we started out there were a number of women but they would eventually drop off but I was the only silly one who kept writing and kept coming back and so sometimes I find myself surrounded by these men so I didn't really make that kind of distinction I just became I guess one of the writing guys I think that during the civil rights movement most black women felt that being discriminated against as a black person was much more and was much harder and more important to fight against than being discriminated as a woman we felt that being discriminated as African-American came first and I think I don't think that black women didn't endorse the women's movement it just wasn't as important because we've always done a lot of different things to take care of our families we've always had to go outside the box of what women do so it wasn't I think a big deal for to black women at least not to me in the women I knew as big a deal as it was for white women because we've always played a lot of different roles I keep thinking about that Shawnee you're a scholar who edited all the blacks or men all the women are white but some of us are brave that's not Barbara and Beverly Smith no that's Patricia Manditha Patricia Hull Gloria T. Hull thank you scholars yeah and so I yeah I know there are people who read more than I do this makes me when I hear your comment Aunt Jeannie about being needing to address the oppression of black people that's one of the things that comes to my mind is that we often think of oppression that impacts black people as oppression that is defined by masculinity or the impact of racism in ways that have consequences that are imaginations attached to masculinity and so like I think about the Thompson sisters who went to parchment prison and how what it meant for them to be in parchment prison and that they were holding to their commitment to challenge white supremacy not necessarily challenging patriarchy you know so I'm just thinking that out loud Jeannie go to the microphone so two things first it was Gloria T. Hull Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith who co-edited the anthology but then I guess the question that I have is really more about less of a gendered question perhaps and more of one that's just an intergenerational conversation so that when I'm looking at our contemporary moment and some of the issues that those of us who are grounded in the tradition of arts and activism are working to confront we're looking at things like the explosion of the prison industrial complex we're looking at the growing inequality along class lines and class stratification in particular you know we're looking at the place that we occupy on the global stage and where in particular African Americans what role we're going to play and challenging imperialism and militarism and the myth of American exceptionalism when we have a black man as the voice of the white house so I guess as we're looking at all of these different issues what I would like to know is not only your particular stance on what your people should be doing and what leaders should be doing but also I remember at the 50th anniversary of SNCC Harry Belafonte came down and pointed out that the work of people who were involved in that movement is not behind y'all you're still here and the work is still going on and you still remain very relevant in what we need to be shaping now so I guess I'd also be interested in the current work that you're engaged in particularly as it relates to those issues with limits oh okay I thought I could get it out there but anyway oh okay apologize I am because of my the severity of my arthritis I don't get to do much I have times when I can't do anything at all so I spend a lot of time on facebook you know and that's where I get an opportunity to put my point of view out there keep people focused on the need to stay engaged informed and radical stay in the fight because the fight will not end until the fight is over until it ends if that makes sense to anybody you must but in order to fight you have to know who you're fighting why you're fighting them and how aligned and unified you can fight them and that's where I focus my energies in terms of staying relevant to the movement what I've been doing in the last couple of years is speaking to young people about the civil rights movement because as you know it is not taught in schools especially black schools so I go around talking to students and working with Wendy because she's always got something going on where she needs somebody to come speak about civil rights and she calls Mama Dodie and runs but I think it's very important to let young people know what we had to go through for them to be where they are today because a lot I remember speaking at the Y not at the Y at the Treme Center to a group of young boy scouts they were aged seven to nine it was Jerome Smith Matt Suarez who we call Flicky and myself who spoke there and we were talking about riding the bus and having to sit behind a screen and one little boy I think he was seven years old he said what's a screen so we had to describe to him what a screen was and he looked at us and he said no way because he's been used to sitting wherever he wants to sit on the bus and I say wait and they just don't know so I was talking about James former and one kid about nine years old he said the great debater well I had never seen the movie and that's what he know James former has been the great debater from seeing a movie a recent movie and it's amazing that none of the kids knew anything about our civil rights leader they didn't know about the civil rights movement and they didn't know about what we went through and that's why I feel it's important to talk to young people to let them know about the freedom the sit-ins about free southern theater because I don't know how many of them today have gone to see a lie well maybe they do maybe they go to see the Madea thing but other than that and I have a question for John because I always thought when I went back in the days when you did waiting for Godot why did you select that because I found it very hard trying to follow that and I now because who was in that Merd Levy and Gil Moses and Jane Carmell yeah and I never could figure that out and I say why are they doing this production why don't they do something that I can relate to the same thing I was talking about when I said John and I used to get into arguments about keeping the productions that we were doing relevant to the area we were in and to the people of that area you remember I made the remark one time I said we've got to do some plays about things that happened in the bar room because these are things that these people can you know that the people relate to they knew they knew about bar rooms they didn't know about some of the things areas that we were speaking of at the time in our plays and that's when you when you put the show play in a bar room whatever the subject is they can then relate because it's in a place that they know and they're willing to go to that place or in a church yeah a church or a bar room you know or at least make the surroundings theirs someplace they feel they own is that the same thing you know I just didn't understand why like I say would they come into my community and do waiting for good though and I was trying to comprehend what was going on and the point they were trying to get over to me that I could not understand and when you come into an area like desire poor area but like I say I didn't know I was poor until I went to high school because we always had a lot to eat my dad from Mississippi and that's another thing when you did the plays in Homes County my dad is from Homes County and you mentioned going through Yazoo City I got relatives there and I was born in Yazoo County in Benton Mississippi I wanted to okay well let me just say that there are representatives in the audience who are carrying on the work that I was most recently involved with and that was as founding director of the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal. The new director is here would you stand up Reverend Deanna Vandevere and the center is very much involved in fostering a lot of wonderful community relationships and we would house and program volunteers from all over the country as a part of the recovery after Hurricane Katrina and educate them before we would send them out into our community so we did a lot of anti-racism training I have been spending the last 22 years at Georgia State University as director of African American Student Services and Programs where we have over 8,000 black students really more than all the HBCUs combined in Georgia in at least in Atlanta I know for sure and so what I did in that position was continue to keep the civil rights movement in the forefront of information passed on to those students as well as to make sure that the students the black students the students of color were retained and would graduate and so that's what I've been doing and particularly also emphasizing the arts in the programming of activities at Georgia State for 25 years I administered and raised funds for a sickle cell program here in New Orleans I've been retired for the last couple of years I'm not doing anything official with the civil rights movement though I was part of a book written by women in the civil rights movement women from SNCC do you remember the hands on the freedom plow you're right so if anybody's interested it's called hands on the freedom plow freedom plow but good thank you I spent a lot of time with my children and my family and I tried to instill within them some of the things that I've learned and I I know that they have I think today it's much harder because we had a very clear cut enemy that we were trying to overcome and it's not so clear cut today and so I think that the job today is much much harder and I spend time with my husband who's here Bob Banks I've been a high school teacher for a long time I've been retired a while too but as a high school teacher and since retirement I have been going back and doing some consulting work here and there working with high school kids so I work with them in the ways that's needed which is just so many ways like you're talking about these enemies that are not so clear cut in terms of support the kind of extra support that they need in addition to the basic education stuff as well as the education stuff and you know trying to trying to clear out some of the miseducation but I think right now for the last couple of years especially mostly I've been working with John so I've been back into my support role in helping him to do what he needs to do I just want to say thank you again and I hope we take this as an opportunity to just remember that most of the work that we know about has more to the story and that we look to the women to learn more about how black liberation struggle has been sustained and been strategized and been out has had tactics that have continued to bring us closer to freedom so I can't help I think we should just stand up and and not let go and then definitely we can give a sign of trust so everyone hold hands these are my aunties and my mamas