Category Archives: Black & White & Other Colors

“Pathway to Freedom” — Opening Night!

The wait is over! The fabulous unique outdoor drama about Quakers & others joining enslaved people in their efforts to escape bondage in pre-Civil War North Carolina takes the stage for the premiere performance of its 22nd season tonight, July 7, showtime at 8 PM.

(If you can’t get there tonight, there are performances Friday and Saturday, then again on July 14-16, and six more after that before the limited run concludes on Saturday August 6.

More details including ticket prices & directions are here: http://www.snowcampoutdoortheatre.com/shows

Don’t miss it!

“Pathway To Freedom” – Getting Ready For The Show

The cast of “Pathway to Freedom” is hard at work now, learning their lines, practicing scenes, and between rehearsals helping out with technical and scenery preparation.
I got to sit in on the first read-through of the entire script. The cast members sat in the ampitheatre as the dusk fell, and the stunning song of wood thrushes filled the surrounding forest.
By the time the drama’s shattering climax had been recited, night had fallen. The green trees were inky silhouettes. Faces and script pages were lit by glowing cell phone screens. And the story was as powerful as the first time I saw it, more than ten years ago.

A Unique Quaker Drama: “Pathway To Freedom”

A Unique Quaker Drama: “Pathway To Freedom” Resistance to slavery in North Carolina is a story that has not been fully told. The compelling original play Pathway to Freedom opens the door to more awareness and better understanding of this epic history.

Women’s History: Angelina Grimké, Breaking Taboos, & Gaining Religious Liberty

Maintaining religious liberty within the Religious Society of Friends has not always been easy. For instance, contrary to popular Quaker legend, work in the abolitionist movement was very unpopular among Friends, and especially repugnant to the entrenched power structure of recorded ministers and elder. They thought it was “creaturely,” needlessly dangerous — and many highly-placed Friends, while not own slaves, yet had extensive business interests connected to the slave economy. These were threatened by connections with abolition “agitation.
The result was what I have called “The Great Purge”; many Friends were forced out of the Society, and others resigned, to uphold their antislavery principles. Even some meetings were laid down by “executive action” for being tainted by the reforming virus.

Some Friends did not wait for the Overseers and elders to show up to apply this “discipline.”

Spoiler Alert: Atticus Finch Isn’t Perfect. (I Can Live With That. Can You?)

I’ll hold off on a pre-emptive literary judgment on the novel itself til I read it (counting down the hours); but as a slice drawn from actual history & life, the good Atticus/bad Atticus (or as I prefer, the Easy-Simple Atticus vs the Complex-More Human Atticus) is a no-brainer.

See, I’ve Been There – Done That. For instance (one of many) I learned long ago that the Martin Luther King I shared a jail cell with in Selma, Alabama, had earlier faked and plagiarized most of the dissertation that gained him the title of “Doctor.” And further, that this dauntless crusader against the public immorality of American racism & militarism had a private sexual morality that departed widely from his professed Christian values.