The State of Mississippi and the Face of Emmett Till

Last updated

The State of Mississippi and the Face of Emmett Till is a 2003 play written by David Barr and Mamie Till Mobley. The show chronicles the life and brutal death of Emmett Till, and the circumstances that surrounded his murder. [1]

Contents

Performances

Pegasus Players

The show premiered in September 2003 at the Pegasus Players theatre in Chicago. Directed by Douglas Alan Mann, the play went on a national tour before closing.

Dillard University

The show premiered in February 2005 at Dillard University in New Orleans. Directed by Vergil Smith, Till ran for 13 performances before closing. The show was to return to Dillard's stage in February 2006, but due to damage suffered by Hurricane Katrina, it never did.

Nashville

It was performed at the Darkhorse Theater in Nashville in 2009. [1]

Coppin State University

The show ran for a weekend at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland during October 2005. Two actors were nominated for an Irene Ryan scholarship.

Grambling State University

It was performed at Grambling State University for Black History Month in 2011. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

Rosa Parks American civil rights activist (1913–2005)

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".

Lewis Black American stand-up comedian, actor, author, playwright, and social critic

Lewis Niles Black is an American stand-up comedian and actor. His comedy routines often escalate into angry rants about history, politics, religion, or any other cultural trends.

Emmett Till African-American lynching victim (1941–1955)

Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement.

Jasmine Guy American actress, director, singer

Jasmine Guy is an American actress, director, singer and dancer. She is known for her role as Dina in the 1988 film School Daze and as Whitley Gilbert-Wayne on the NBC The Cosby Show spin-off A Different World, which originally ran from 1987 to 1993. Guy won four consecutive NAACP Image Awards from 1990 through 1993 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on the show. She played Roxy Harvey on Dead Like Me and as Sheila "Grams" Bennet on The Vampire Diaries. More recently, she played the role of Gemma, Richard Webber’s friend and potential love interest on Grey's Anatomy.

Old Crow Medicine Show Americana string band based in Nashville, Tennessee, United States

Old Crow Medicine Show is an Americana string band based in Nashville, Tennessee, that has been recording since 1998. They were inducted into the Grand Ole Opry on September 17, 2013. Their ninth album, Remedy, released in 2014, won the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. The group's music has been called old-time, folk, and alternative country. Along with original songs, the band performs many pre-World War II blues and folk songs.

The Dillards

The Dillards are an American bluegrass band from Salem, Missouri, popularly known for their appearance as "The Darlings" on The Andy Griffith Show.

<i>Jet</i> (magazine) African-American weekly magazine formerly based in Chicago

Jet is an American weekly digital magazine focusing on news, culture, and entertainment related to the African-American community. Founded in November 1951 by John H. Johnson of the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, Illinois, the magazine was billed as "The Weekly Negro News Magazine". Jet chronicled the civil rights movement from its earliest years, including the murder of Emmett Till, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the activities of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Dixie (song) Popular mid-19th century American minstrel song

"Dixie", also known as "Dixie's Land", "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and other titles, is a song about the Southern United States first made in 1859. It is one of the most distinctively Southern musical products of the 19th century. It was not a folk song at its creation, but it has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely cemented the word "Dixie" in the American vocabulary as a nickname for the Southern U.S.

Eden Espinosa American actress and singer

Eden Erica Espinosa is an American actress and singer who is best known for her performances as Elphaba for the Broadway, Los Angeles, and San Francisco productions of the musical Wicked.

Ray LaMontagne American singer-songwriter

Raymond Charles Jack LaMontagne is an American singer-songwriter and musician. LaMontagne has released eight studio albums: Trouble, Till the Sun Turns Black, Gossip in the Grain, God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise, Supernova, Ouroboros, Part of the Light, and Monovision. He was born in New Hampshire and was inspired to create music after hearing an album by Stephen Stills. Critics have compared LaMontagne's music to that of Otis Redding, Ryan Adams, Beck, Pink Floyd, The Band, Van Morrison, Nick Drake and Tim Buckley.

T. R. M. Howard American physician

Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard was an American civil rights leader, fraternal organization leader, entrepreneur and surgeon. Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard is one of several prominent Black physicians of the Civil Rights Movement whose legacy is profoundly overlooked and forgotten. He was among the mentors to activists such as Medgar Evers, Charles Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and Jesse Jackson, whose efforts gained local and national attention leading up to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Howard founded Mississippi's leading civil rights organization in the 1950s, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership; and played a prominent role in the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till in the late 1950s. He was also president of the National Medical Association, chairman of the board of the National Negro Business League, and a leading national advocate of African-American businesses. His contributions were clearly not only in a clinical setting, but also in his addressing of social determinants of health that disproportionately impact the black community.

Timothy B. Tyson is an American writer and historian who specializes in the issues of culture, religion, and race associated with the Civil Rights Movement. He is a senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and an adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina.

Mamie Till American schoolteacher and mother of Emmett Till

Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley was an American educator and activist. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the 14 year-old boy murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, after accusations that he had whistled at a white woman, a grocery store cashier named Carolyn Bryant. For Emmett's funeral, in Chicago, Mamie Till insisted that the casket containing his body be left open, because, in her words, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy."

Stanley Nelson Jr. American documentary filmmaker

Stanley Earl Nelson Jr. is an American documentary filmmaker and a MacArthur Fellow known as a director, writer and producer of documentaries examining African-American history and experiences. He is a recipient of the 2013 National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards.

Johnny Cash American singer-songwriter (1932–2003)

John R. Cash was an American singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his career. He was known for his deep, calm bass-baritone voice, the distinctive sound of his Tennessee Three backing band characterized by train-like chugging guitar rhythms, a rebelliousness coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor, free prison concerts, and a trademark all-black stage wardrobe which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black".

Tim Dillard American baseball player

Timothy Charles Dillard is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Milwaukee Brewers. He is a pregame and postgame analyst for Brewers television broadcasts on Bally Sports Wisconsin.

Darkhorse Theater is a performing arts venue in Nashville, Tennessee, which hosts performances across different disciplines, including theater, music, and dance. Formerly a Presbyterian church, the facility seats 136 people.

The history of the 1954 to 1968 American civil rights movement has been depicted and documented in film, song, theater, television, and the visual arts. These presentations add to and maintain cultural awareness and understanding of the goals, tactics, and accomplishments of the people who organized and participated in this nonviolent movement.

Dreaming Emmett is the first play by the Nobel-winning African-American writer Toni Morrison. First performed in 1986, the play was commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY-Albany. The play's world premier, which was directed by Gilbert Moses, was on January 5, 1986 at Capital Repertory Company in the Market Theater in Albany, New York. After its first production, Morrison reportedly destroyed all known video recordings of the play and copies of the script. Thus, all descriptions of the plot are reconstructed from contemporary reviews.

Ifa Bayeza is a playwright, producer, and conceptual theater artist. She wrote the play The Ballad of Emmett Till, which earned her the Edgar Award for Best Play in 2009. She is the sister of Ntozake Shange, and directed Shange's A Photograph: Lovers in Motion, which was a part of the Negro Ensemble Company's 2015 Year of the Woman Play Reading Series in New York City.

References

  1. 1 2 Martin Brady (February 26, 2009). "The Face of Emmett Till at Darkhorse; Black History Month Docudrama". Nashville Scene.
  2. "Black College Wire - Essay Writer".