Director's Statement

The well of my respect for Black women has always run deep. Maybe it's because my great-grandmother was my first love and best friend. She was seventy years-old when I was born and she lived to be ninety-nine. That was a long time for her to share the stories of her past and the experiences that shaped her. She and her only sibling—her sister—were both widowed young with six children between them. And somehow, they made it work. They were Black women born poor at the turn of the twentieth century who raised children with Master’s degrees and Ph.Ds. I was always inspired by them—and the stories they told.

 

My family is originally from Birmingham, Alabama and family reunions always centered around talk of the Kelly Ingram Park demonstrations, the courageous students at A.H. Parker High School where my mom’s cousins attended at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church where my grandfather’s sister was an usher at the joint funeral of three of the “Four Little Girls.” In our home I was reminded constantly that the freedoms I enjoyed as a Black person had been fiercely fought for and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

 

The living participants of Civil Rights Movement are leaving us every day. And while we have spent some (not enough) time exploring the lives and contributions of giants like Medgar Evers, Dr. King and Minister Malcolm, we have oft-ignored the larger context in which these men lived and how their assassinations impacted the women they loved. That’s what “Veils” attempts to do in this production—in addition to highlighting stories like that of the courageous Viola Liuzzo that you may not have known when you arrived. Black Girl Magic has been a real thing for a long time, it just hasn’t been appropriately celebrated. Women like Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Joyce and Dorie Ladner and so many others are the shoulders we all stand on. I encourage all to embrace their stories as well as the extraordinary women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Septime Clark, and Daisy Bates. These women were heroines. We should speak their names.