In 1960, a previously unknown writer out of South Alabama published a work that presaged the monumental changes that lay ahead for the American South. It was called, To Kill a Mockingbird. You've probably been assigned to read it at some point in your life. If not, if you're from here or choose to live here, you should read it and read the old testament. Anything else you read from there will have solid roots.
There are, so far, three actor's editions of To Kill a Mockingbird. The first is the screenplay by Horton Foote. Foote wrote something like thirty stageplays but won an Oscar for the Adapted Screenplay he penned of Harper Lee's novel. Rights for his script are complicated to get and not really written for the stage.
Christopher Sergel published an acting edition in 1970. Newstage has done this version, I believe, three times. Several of my friends were involved in these productions, and they were all brilliant. If you've seen To Kill a Mockingbird on stage in the last fifty years, it was most likely this version.
In 2016, Aaron Sorkin, who wrote The West Wing and A Few Good Men, revived Mockingbird with a new script that holds the current title for the most successful straight play in terms of audience in the history of Broadway.
Sorkin's script features extended scenes with Tom Robinson and especially Calpernia, trying to broaden the cultural perspective of the play so that it's more than just the white man hero that Lee's book is often criticized for.
Today at History is Lunch, a writer discussed his book about the sit-ins at Jackson's Woolworth's lunch counter on May 28, 1963. In four days, this will have been sixty years ago. In twenty-three days, I will also turn sixty years old.
I was, reportedly a very difficult pregnancy. My mother was sent home for an entire trimester to rest because her doctor could not find a fetal heartbeat. Having miscarried twins eleven months before I was conceived, my mother was anxious about my pregnancy. Had it failed too, her plans were to stop trying, as carrying children for two trimesters and losing them in the third was taking a toll on her. The riot at Woolworths on Capitol Street, where white men attacked nine protestors attempting to break the color line in Jackson, was very big news when she was at home, not knowing if I'd be born alive or dead.
I was going to attend the lecture in person, but it looked like rain, so I watched over the internet. I knew, going in, that I would know some of the names involved.
The first was Allen C Thompson. Thompson served as Jackson's Mayor from 1948 until 1969. He was preceded by Leland Speed, who developed Eastover and whose wife gave me three sculpting lessons in her home on Eastover Drive for free. He was followed by Russell C Davis. When I knew Thompson, he was an older man living near my grandfather. I was too young to remember any of the horrible things he had done, and until I took Mississippi History under Jerry Mcbride at St. Andrews, nobody had ever told me. I can't begin to list the many times that Thompson was on the wrong side of history. I believed that HE believed he was doing the right thing. Nothing in my memory of him says he was willingly an evil man. Sometimes, it's doing what you perceive as the right thing that can be the most evil.
The other name I recognized was Jim Black. A recent Supreme Court ruling specified that Southern Police could not enter private property to arrest protestors unless the owner advised them a crime was being committed. On May 28, 1963, nobody at Woolworth advised the police that a crime was being committed at the lunch counter, so the police stayed outside on Capitol Street. Some have suggested this was intentional, as it left the protesters inside at the mercy of the angry white mob that was forming.
The police chief in Jackson sent Black, a young inspector, into the store in plain clothes as an undercover agent, just in case things got bad. Then things got bad. White boys pulled protesters off their lunch counter stools and began kicking and beating them. Having then witnessed a crime, Black arrested both the attacker and the attacked, charging one with assault and the other with disturbing the peace, an unfair charge for the protester who hadn't broken any law, but it stopped the attack on him and saw him safely transferred to a police van where the mob couldn't attack him further.
When I knew Jim Black, he was Chief of Police for Dale Danks. As my brother's illness got worse, he had several encounters with the police; Chief Black had known my father since High School and did everything he could to help Jimmy. By the time Black ascended to Chief of Police, the worst of the civil rights era incidents had passed. He served during Jackson's most extended period of growth yet. I was probably spoiled by growing up during this period and knowing the men and women who orchestrated it. If you ever see me lose patience with Jackson's current government, it's probably because it's difficult for me not to compare them to our "glory days."
The third name I knew in the lecture was one I knew I'd hear going in. Ed King was involved in nearly every significant civil rights incident in Mississippi. He paid a price for it, but he never let that slow him down. King is the young man in the clerical collar seen in the photos below. I don't remember a time when Ed King wasn't around somewhere in my life. He is ubiquitous. He's in the Sunday school class I joined at Galloway and attends by Zoom. Some of the best legal and religious minds in Mississippi over the last hundred years are in that class, including King. I've been on both sides of the aisle with King.
Most of the time, I stand with him, but there came a day when Abortion Rights activists wanted to meet at Millsaps, and Ed King was against it. I sat in a meeting with Stuart Good, Wayne Miller, representatives of the Clinic Defense League, and Ed King to discuss the issue. Knowing that I was on the opposite side of King was one of the more intimidating moments in my life. His feeling was that, as a religious school, we had no business butting into this political and moral issue. My position and I think Stuart's position was that Millsaps was not taking a stand on the abortion issue, even though our students might, but we were renting one of our spaces (the heritage room) to an outside organization. The event happened despite King's challenge.
There weren't any incidents, and Rev. King didn't do anything to interfere, but I felt the heat on the back of my neck that day. I've always believed you should try and understand the viewpoint opposing yours, and I believe I understood where Rev King was coming from, but to me, the students who felt strongly about preserving their reproductive rights were more important. Having to stand up to somebody you idolized is a pretty tough lesson. I don't know if he ever knew what I was going through. I'm sure to him I was just Jim Campbell's boy, sticking his nose in where it didn't belong. I'm pretty good at that. To be fair, so is he.
I don't have an ending for this, mainly because it's just not over. Woolworth's is a parking garage now, built by the son of the Mayor who preceded Thompson. Mayors Davis and Danks were both accused of trying to tear down all the monuments of the Civil Rights Movement. If you look at downtown Jackson today, there might be something to that. The Civil Rights Movement probably won't end in my lifetime. For some of my youngest friends, it might end in theirs. At least, I hope so, but something tells me "no".
Ray Mcfarland will say he's too old, but I'd love to see him in a new production of Mockingbird using the Sorkin Script. He's not too old. He's the same age as Jeff Daniels when he originated the role on Broadway. I don't know if Francine is up for yet another production of Mockingbird, but they've done something like eleven million performances of Christmas Carrol, so maybe it won't hurt.
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