“The Hillsboro Story”
Civil rights drama comes to Southern State
“On a hot summer night—July 5, 1954—Lincoln School, the
“colored” elementary school in Hillsboro, Ohio, went up in
flames, and my sweet, sleepy, segregated little hometown was
suddenly awake…”
So writes author-performer Susan Banyas,
a third grader in 1954 and witness to the powerful civil rights
drama unfolding around her.
Banyas will bring a
theatrical performance of “The Hillsboro Story” back to its
namesake town 7 p.m. Friday, April 2, in the Edward K. Daniels
Auditorium on Southern State Community College’s Central Campus,
100 Hobart Drive, Hillsboro. The show is free and open to the
public.
The story opens on July 5, 1954, when the
“colored” elementary school went up in flames. The county
engineer, a white man determined to force integration, struck
the match on that hot summer night that sent him to the state
penitentiary (and into the FBI files) and sparked five
African-American mothers to stage a two-year protest.
This local event became the first test case for Brown v. Board
of Education (the May 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision which
banned school segregation) in the North.
Banyas was in
the third grade at the time, and her memory of those events
sparked this cultural detective story—a lively weaving of spoken
word, movement, monologues and visual images, backed by an
evocative original music score. The show will be performed by
Banyas and professional actors LaVerne Green, Paige Jones and
Jennifer Lanier.
“I was in the third grade, absorbing the
cultural commotion, which was quickly and quietly thrown into
the dump heap of history and reduced to two one-liners: ‘The
negro women were trouble-makers’ and ‘The county engineer was
crazy,’” said Banyas.
The work was written as a sequel to
“No Strangers Here Today,” a local story of the Underground
Railroad movement. Both works are set in Highland County, Ohio,
100 years apart, and celebrate bi-racial resistance movements
that are core to maintaining democracy and upholding human
rights. Southern State Community College hosted a performance of
“No Strangers Here Today” in February 2009.
“Fifty years
after seeing the Marching Mothers outside Mrs. Mallory's
classroom window, I went back to my hometown to find them,” said
Banyas. “The investigation is informed by historical research,
photography and extensive interviews with key players locally
and nationally, whose voices form the heart of the story.”
Voices in the story—sometimes identified, sometimes not—come
from multiple interviews and include Elsie Steward Young
(marching mother), Gertrude Clemons Hudson (marching mother),
Imogene Curtis (ringleader of the marching mothers), Eleanor
Curtis Cumberland (Imogene’s daughter), Doris Cumberland Woods
(classmate after integration), Lewis Goins (classmate after
integration), Philip Partridge (engineer, from his memoir), Tom
Partridge (Philip’s son), the Honorable Constance Baker Motley
(attorney for the mothers), John Banyas (Susan Banyas’ father
and Hillsboro businessman), Lenore Gorden (Susan’s friend
Connie’s mother), Mrs. Mallory (reading “Charlotte’s Web”),
Wesley C. “Junior” Burns (Imogene Curtis’ cousin), Judge Richard
Davis (county prosecutor), James Hapner (attorney for the board
of education), Mary Hackney (Quaker teacher), Thurgood Marshall
(from his opinion in the Brown v. Board of Education case),
Mississippi Senator James Eastland (from speech), Rosa Parks
(from “Rose Parks, a Life” by Douglas Brinkley) and Judge Potter
Stewart (from his opinion in Clemons v. Board of
Education/Hillsboro, Ohio).
“The Hillsboro Story” was
selected as the Artists Repertory Theater’s entry in Oregon’s
Fertile Ground new performance works festival in January 2010,
and will be produced by ART for the 2010-11 season. The show
will tour the Pacific Northwest and Ohio regions.
Funding
for the development of this project has been made possible with
grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, The Puffin
Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, Pacific Power Foundation,
Saint Mary's College of California Faculty Development, and The
Kennedy Center.
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