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Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation
April 8 at 6:00 pm - 7:15 pm CDT
Monday, April 8, 2024: Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation
Africana studies professor Julius B. Fleming Jr. in conversation with educator Jessica Rucker, will discuss the role of Black theater in the Black Freedom Struggle and the concept of “Black patience.” They will discuss:
- Black theater as a space in which Black people rehearsed and staged Black freedom and liberation,
- The role of Black theater and Black theater workers in the successes of the Civil Rights Movement and how they helped engage a base of Black people who might not have otherwise embodied Black freedom through activism and organizing,
- The term “Black patience” to name the ways time is weaponized against Black people by forcing them to repeatedly perform waiting as a criteria for their freedom,
- How Black patience “maps a racial history of time” — a concept that teachers can use to introduce the importance of and demand “freedom now.”