HP_021617

hplandmark.com life & arts
the highland park landmark | February 16, 2017 | 23
One-man show brings civil rights movement
to life for Highland Park students
Katie Copenhaver
Freelance Reporter
Black history took
center stage in the play,
“Breach of Peace”, on Feb.
9 at Elm Place School to
teach students about segregation.
Eighth-graders
from all three of Highland
Park’s middle schools
watched playwright and
actor Mike Wiley’s multimedia
performance about
the Civil Rights Freedom
Riders of 1961. Wiley portrayed
all of the characters
in the play, accompanied
by a motion and still picture
montage of the actual
activists, with occasional
audio of them speaking.
The appearance of one
character, John Lewis,
offered a connection between
history and the present.
Lewis was 21 when
he became one of the
original 13 Freedom Riders
who planned to travel
from Washington D.C
to New Orleans in May
1961. The Freedom Riders
planned to challenge the
non-enforcement of two
Supreme Court decisions
that banned segregated interstate
bus travel.
He described how he
and his fellow travelers
were almost burned
to death on a bus in one
town and beaten in several
other towns. They were
also arrested and jailed a
few times in Alabama and
Mississippi, on charges
ranging from trespassing,
unlawful assembly, violating
local and state Jim
Crow laws (which stood
in defiance of the U.S. Supreme
Court rulings), and
“breach of peace.”
Now a U.S. representative
from Georgia, Lewis
recently made headlines
by boycotting the presidential
inauguration of
Donald Trump.
“This assembly will
bring up some interesting
class discussions,” said
Social Studies Teacher
Michael Buss, in regard to
Lewis’ story and the play’s
other historical accounts.
The activists grew to approximately
300 as their
trip on Greyhound and
Trailways buses continued
through the south. As they
stopped in various towns,
they were often met with
mob violence, organized
by the Ku Klux Klan and
other white supremacist
groups and supported by
local law enforcement.
One of their most notorious
opponents was Birmingham’s
police commissioner,
Bull Connor,
who was first shown on
film and then portrayed by
Wiley, as he rallied white
citizens to keep the color
lines in place and attack
the Freedom Riders when
they came to town.
Wiley based the play on
true accounts from the surviving
participants, who
included young men and
women, both black and
white. Their mug shots
from various Southern cities
were part of the montage
behind Wiley as he
told their stories of bravery
and determination in
the face of violence most
of the young audience has
not experienced.
Activists James Farmer,
who initiated the freedom
rides, and James Lawson,
an advocate of nonviolent
resistance to racism, were
also among the characters
in the play. Martin Luther
King Jr. met with the Freedom
Riders in Montgomery,
Ala., but would not go
with them into Mississippi
for fear of being killed, yet
his directive stayed with
them: “Our conscience
tells us that the law is
wrong.”
“Breach of Peace” is
a condensed version of
his longer ensemble play,
“The Parchman Hour,”
Wiley explained during his
question and answer session
with the students following
the performance.
They asked Wiley a
number of thoughtful
questions, including what
in his background led him
to write and perform plays
about the Civil Rights
Movement.
“My grandmother was
a maid for white people
in the 1940s and ‘50s,
and partly into the ‘60s,
and then became a school
teacher,” Wiley said. But,
even more than that, his
great-grandfather had been
one of the first African-
American landowners in
Virginia after the Civil
War, but the land was
taken away from him by a
court ruling, which gave it
to a white man, a practice
that was fairly common.
“I feel like what I’m doing
in some way makes up
for his loss,” Wiley said.
Students also wondered
how Wiley chooses which
stories to tell, to which
he explained that several
ideas have come from audience
suggestions. He
added that his audiences
vary, depending on whether
they are in schools or
professional theaters and
in urban or rural communities.
At some schools he
visits, he realizes the students
are unaware of the
segregation that took place
in the south and the ensuing
Civil Rights Movement
and that his performance
might be their only
lesson on that subject.
Winter
reading
is here.
Chicagoly’s winter issue is out now.
Follow up for more at Chicagolymag.com