�ֲ���ý’ Africana program offers five plays during Black History Month that use historical events as a springboard to explore white oppression and black resistance.

Four were written by Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle, who also teaches in the college’s Africana program. Each is based on actual incidents involving African American slaves in 18th-century New England. The fifth play, Janice Liddell’s Who Will Sing for Lena?, will be performed by Jes Washington ’13.

�ֲ���ý Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle’s Colonial-era plays — including The Petition, shown in performance last summer with actor Stephen Sampson at Boston’s Old State House — are the products of assiduous research, including work at the Massachusetts Archives. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

Noon, Feb. 6, Commons Fireplace Lounge

Part I: Blood in the Revolution — “According to Mark”

Part of the larger work Blood in the Revolution, this 10-minute play reading was first in a series of four plays by Lecturer in Theater Cliff Odle marking Black History Month at �ֲ���ý. The title character “was a slave who could read and was looking for a way to free himself from an oppressive master,” says Odle. “And he felt the Bible provided a path to murdering him as long as he didn’t spill blood.”

Noon, Feb. 10, Fireplace Lounge, Commons

Part II: Blood in the Revolution — “Witness to a Massacre”

This 10-minute play reading deals with an educated slave named Andrew who was an important witness to the Boston Massacre, the 1770 killing of several colonists by British troops.

Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle addresses viewers in the Commons Fireplace Lounge during the Feb. 6 performance of his short play According to Mark. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Who Will Sing for Lena?

Jessica Washington ’13.

Jessica Washington ’13 returns to �ֲ���ý to perform Janice Liddell’s one-woman show, Who Will Sing for Lena?

The play is about Lena Mae Baker, a domestic worker from Georgia who shot and killed her white employer in 1944 in self-defense and became the first and only woman executed in Georgia’s electric chair.

Noon, Feb. 14, Fireplace Lounge, Commons

Part III: Blood in the Revolution — “A Suit Made of Freedom”

This 10-minute play reading focuses on a woman named Mum Bett, aka Elizabeth Freeman, who successfully won her freedom from slavery in a 1780 court case in Massachusetts.

5pm, Feb. 27, Gannett Theater, 103 Pettigrew Hall

A Deerfield Homecoming

This 90-minute play combines and fictionalizes two separate historical episodes that took place in Deerfield, Mass. One involves Eunice Williams, an English colonist who was kidnapped by the French and the Mohawks as a child and became assimilated into Mohawk society. The other is about Lucy Terry, a slave whose ballad poem “Bars Fight” is considered the oldest known literary work by an African American.

Observed every February, “Black History Month is a time that we get to think about, to celebrate black achievements,” says Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies, and chair of the Program in Africana.

But in addition to that, “it’s a time to continue our discussion of race and white supremacy,” Nero says. “And I’m hoping we also think about and challenge anti-blackness — and by anti-blackness, I mean the ways in which we omit and evade discussions that affirm black people and our right to exist as citizens.”

�ֲ���ý’ Africana program this month holds up such discussions in an especially engaging way: drama.

Using historical events as a basis to explore white oppression and black resistance are five plays: four written by Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle, each based on actual incidents involving African American slaves in 18th-century New England, and a fifth, Janice Liddell’s Who Will Sing for Lena?, performed by Jes Washington ’13.

Why theater as a vehicle for Black History Month programming? As a performance medium, it gives every audience its own unique experience, Odle says. “It makes things, to me, more immediate, more alive, more visceral.”

“There’s a tradition of the dramatic form and black history that goes all the way back to W.E.B Du Bois’s pageant plays at the beginning of the 20th century,” Nero adds. “There’s a very deep tradition of black theater as a tool to educate about black accomplishment and to challenge anti-blackness.”

The Fireplace Lounge in Commons is the site for readings of plays during Black History Month that draw on historical events to explore white oppression and black resistance. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Washington, who has performed the one-woman Who Will Sing for Lena? since 2016, was a rhetoric major at �ֲ���ý and this year will earn an MFA at the Actors Studio Drama School, in New York City. Liddell’s one-woman show depicts the true story of Lena Mae Baker, a domestic worker in Georgia who killed her white lover/abuser in self-defense in 1944.

Jes Washington ’13 appears in two performances of Who Will Sing for Lena? as part of Black History Month programming at �ֲ���ý.

A jury of white men quickly found Baker guilty of murder, and she was the first woman to be executed by the electric chair in Georgia.

While Liddell’s two-act play grapples with oppression based on skin color and on gender, it’s a broad indictment of the abuse of power — or as Washington puts it, someone exercising “dominion over you just for the sheer hell of it.”

Lena, a dreamer, is “in the position where, no matter what she wants, someone is always dominant over her. She can’t get higher, because the person that is higher than her won’t allow her to do that. It’s her mom, it’s her employer, it’s society.

“She has a childlike quality to her that is beautiful when it’s time to be a child, but not so much when she should be an adult. She never really learned how to be an adult.”

The headstone of Lena Baker in Mt. Vernon Baptist Church cemetery, in Cuthbert, Ga. (Photograph by 86billy86 CC BY-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Washington took the role, in part, as a way of coming to grips with trauma she suffered as a child. “Most of the women who were approached to do this role had similar experiences to the character and it was a little too much for them. So they all turned it down,” Washington says.

“It was very close to home for me as well, but I decided that instead of saying ‘No’ and running away from it, I wanted to use it, to heal from it.”

Early on, she says, “I was going through this process of healing, so it was more frightening every time I went up. There was only so much depth I could give it without crying uncontrollably onstage. But as the years have gone on, I’ve allowed myself to think extremely deeply into the character. Lena and I are quite one at this point.”

At �ֲ���ý, Washington belonged to the Modern Dance Company and was one of the students who founded Sankofa, whose Martin Luther King Jr. Day performances examine stories and experiences of the African diaspora.

Advised by Nero, her rhetoric thesis looked at colorism, prejudice based on skin color, within black and Hispanic communities. Her thesis materials comprised a 45-minute video documentary featuring interviews with a host of �ֲ���ý folks — and a 75-page written piece.

“Instead of saying ‘No’ and running away from Lena, I wanted to use it, to heal from it.”

She and her interview subjects, Washington says, talked about the effects of colorism “on minority mindsets — what we think about as far as what is beautiful, what is acceptable, what gets you along in this life. Or some of the things that our mothers would say when we were growing up because they just didn’t know any better.”

The products of assiduous research, including long hours in the Massachusetts Archives, Odle’s Colonial-era plays scrutinize a period in African American history that figures less in today’s consciousness than happenings in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet there’s an intriguing parallel between the macrocosm of Colonial society and the smaller black world within it.

“Many of the ideas of liberty and independence that the Founding Fathers thought about and eventually fought over,” he explains, “were ideas that African Americans were thinking about and fighting over, even more so because they were dealing with slavery on top of that.

“So while John Adams and other folks can say, ‘Yes, these powers a thousand miles away are going to make slaves of us,’ there are slaves here saying, ‘Well, you’ve already made slaves of us, and we’d like to have a say in this.’”

Sam Alexander ’20, as Phoebe, speaks to Quaco (Dawrin Silfa ’21) near the end of the Feb. 6 reading of According to Mark. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

He says, “Black history in this sense is American history — it’s as much a part of the foundation of this country as Paul Revere’s ride and anything else any of the Founding Fathers did. So I think if you’re a serious about diversity, if you’re also serious about presenting different views of history, then you want to have a venue where these different views can be displayed,” that venue being Black History Month.

Looking at the status of both African Americans and women, Odle’s full-length Deerfield Homecoming combines and fictionalizes two separate historical episodes that took place in Deerfield, Mass.

One main character is Lucy Terry, a slave whose ballad poem “Bars Fight” is considered the oldest known literary work by an African American. The other is Eunice Williams, an English colonist who was kidnapped by the French and the Mohawks as a child and became assimilated into Mohawk society.

J’von Ortiz-Cedeno ’22 of Portland, Texas, asks a question after the Fireplace Lounge reading as Charlotte Lynskey ’21 of Costa Mesa, Calif. listens. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In real life, Eunice periodically visited her English family. In his play, Odle explains, Eunice’s father kidnaps her on one of those visits. He assigns Lucy Terry, Eunice’s childhood friend, to somehow try to reawaken Eunice’s pre-Mohawk identity.

Each around 10 minutes long, Odle’s other three plays in the Black History Month series are parts of Blood in the Revolution, a work in progress. Performed on Feb. 6, According to Mark is about “a slave who could read and was looking for a way to free himself from an oppressive master. And he felt the Bible provided a path to murdering him as long as he didn’t spill blood.”

The play is set during the planning of the murder, which also involved two other slaves, Mark’s sister Phyllis and a woman called Phoebe. In the actual event, Mark was hanged for the murder and Phyllis was burned at the stake — a punishment that in Colonial America was reserved for female slaves who kill their masters, Odle says.

Quaco (Dawrin Silfa ’21) makes a point to Mark (professor Charles Nero) and Phyllis
(Perla Figuereo ’21). (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Witness to an Execution deals with a literate slave named Andrew who was an important witness to the Boston Massacre, the 1770 killing of several colonists by British troops. As a slave, Odle says, Andrew “does not have the status in society that other witnesses did. So the play explores the kind of pressures that he may have faced in deciding whether or not to actually testify or get involved in white men’s business, as some people would call it.”

Finally, A Suit of Freedom focuses on a woman named Mum Bett, aka Elizabeth Freeman, who successfully won her freedom from slavery in a 1780 court case in Massachusetts. “Her case eventually led to the ending of slavery in Massachusetts,” Odle explains.

“And in that play, she has a discussion with her former mistress, who is trying to lure her back. I thought it’d be interesting to see what that conversation could have been like.”

A poetry reading by Jaki Shelton Green will be the first in a series of events sponsored by the �ֲ���ý College Office of Multicultural Affairs in observance of Black History Month. Green, a poet in residence at �ֲ���ý from Feb. 10 through 14, will read from her most recently published work, Breath of Song: New and Selected Poems (Carolina Wren Press, 2005), at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13, in Chase Hall Lounge, 53 Campus Ave. The reading is open to the public free of charge. For more information, please call 207-786-8376.

A native of North Carolina, Green’s work is rooted in the culture, cadences and folkways of the U.S. South. She received the 2003 North Carolina Award for Literature, awarded by the state Department of Culture, which recognized her as “an inveterate champion of the underdog. Just as she always has been a writer, she has also been a fierce activist for marginalized populations — abused women, the elderly, the incarcerated and especially children.”

Author of several books of poetry, including Conjure Blues: Poems (1996), Singing a Tree into Dance (2004) and Dead on Arrival (1984), Green wrote the play Blue Opal and was a contributing writer to Pete and Shirley: The Great Tar Heel Novel (Down Home Press, 1995). Her poetry has appeared in several journals and such anthologies as The Crucible, The African-American Review, Ms. and Obsidian. Her works have been choreographed by the Chuck Davis African American Dance Ensemble, Miami City Ballet and the Naropa Dance Institute of Colorado.

The Multicultural Center celebrates and promotes the diverse cultural experiences that each member of �ֲ���ý College brings to the community.

A showing of work by Portland artist Daniel Minter will be on display at �ֲ���ý College through Feb. 28 in an exhibition presented for Black History Month. “A Heavy Grace: Paintings and Sculpture” opens with a gallery reception featuring food and music from African American and Brazilian culinary traditions at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 4, in Chase Hall Gallery, Chase Hall, Campus Avenue, �ֲ���ý College. The public is invited to attend the reception and the exhibit, both sponsored by the Multicultural Center, free of charge. Call 207-786-8376 for more information.

Minter is a painter, sculptor, illustrator and arts educator whose work is steeped in the context of African American and African diaspora culture. The designer of the 2004 U.S. Postal Service Kwanza stamp, he is a noted illustrator of several children’s books.

“Minter collects the implements, the figures, the cultural tools of Black experience in diaspora and gives them iconic status,” writes Latin American historian and theologian Rachel Harding. Says Harding: “Many of the figures in Minter’s art are those of ordinary black life, especially of the mid-20th century rural south: hot combs and axes; straw brooms and jack-knives; snakes, jars and crows; round women, big men and long-limbed trees. Through his skilled gaze and carefully honed instinct, Minter elicits deeper meanings from the mundane.”

For more information, call the �ֲ���ý College Multicultural Center at 207-786-8215.

* Monday at 7 p.m., African Diaspora Film Festival: “Chocolat,” Benjamin Mays Center.
* Tuesday at 7 p.m, African Diaspora Film Festival: “Black and White in Color,” Benjamin Mays Center.
* Wednesday at 7 p.m., African Diaspora Film Festival: “Camp de Thiharoye,” Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center.
* Feb. 23 at 7 p.m., African Diaspora Film Festival: “Sugar Cane Alley,” Benjamin Mays Center.
* Feb. 24 at 7.p.m., African Diaspora Film Festival: “The Harder They Come,” with discussion led by Charles Carnegie, associate professor of anthropology, to follow, Benjamin Mays Center.
* Feb. 25 at noon and 3 p.m., lecture by Lorna McDaniel, on “The Black Woman Writer as Ethnographer” in Room 104 and Room 105 respectively of the Olin Arts Center.
* Feb. 27 at 7 p.m., opening reception of “Narrative Quilts” at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, with presentation by artist Michael Cummings in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center.
* Feb. 28 at 7 p.m., Amandla! presents Cinque Dance Company, Schaeffer Theatre.
* March 1 at 2 p.m, African Diaspora Film Festival: “Nothing But A Man” and “Killer of Sheep” followed by discussion with Charles Nero, chair of African American Studies and associate professor of rhetoric, in Room 204 of the Carnegie Science Hall.
* March 2 at 7 p.m., African Diaspora Film Festival: “Just Another Girl on the IRT,” Benjamin Mays Center.
* March 3 at 7 p.m., African Diaspora Film Festival: “Finzan,” followed by discussion with Czerny Brasuell, director of the Multicultural Center; �ֲ���ý sophomore Lena Sene; Joanna Lee, director of affirmative action and Pricilla Arweetew, Benjamin Mays Center.
* March 8 at 6:30 p.m., African Diaspora Film Festival: “Race and Color: Imitation of Life” and “Jungle Fever” followed by a discussion of the films by William Pope.L of the theater department, Benjamin Mays Center. The events are sponsored by the Multicultural Center, African American Studies, Amandla!, the music and theater departments and the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art. For more information, call the Multicultural Center at 207-786-8215.