WS Chronicle

By David Winship

In Selma, Alabama, in 1965, children led the voting rights protests. They demonstrated and were jailed because they couldn’t be fired from their jobs for advocating for their civil rights. The students chanted the rallying cry of “Give Us the Ballot.” When police shot and killed young Jimmy Lee Jackson, the initial march ended in Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettis Bridge. 

When news of this racist confrontation went national, people from all over the country came to join the 300 marchers who vowed to, and completed, the march to Montgomery. Among those marchers was 14-year-old Lynda Blackmon, a girl who had been a part of the Selma protests and the Bloody Sunday march.

Lynda Blackmon Lowery wrote her story, “Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March” as a young adult book in 2015, which won the 2016 Jane Addams Children’s Book Award for Older Children. Fracaswell Hyman’s adaptation of the book, in cooperation with New Heritage Theatre Group and Loire Valley Theater Festival, was presented as a staged reading on Wednesday, July 31, at the International Black Theatre Festival, with Blackmon’s role presented by Tony-Award winner Tonya Pinkins. A combined choir of the Big Four alumni historically Black high schools (Anderson, Atkins, Carver, and Paisley) led the singing of traditional gospel, freedom and marching songs from the ‘60s. It was a congregational-style audience who joined in singing the familiar songs with Marvtastic energy and enthusiasm.

Lynda Blackmon’s mother died when she was young after she was refused medical treatment at a whites-only hospital. Raised by her father, she first heard Martin Luther King, Jr. speak when she was 13. When she heard him, she embraced his message of non-violent resistance, requiring steady, loving confrontation. “I’ll never forget those words,” she said.

March – arrest – jail – repeat. The young students wouldn’t let “anybody turn them around,” in the words of their rallying freedom song. With their teachers’ support, students marched in Selma. Lynda was arrested nine times when she was just 14 years old. Singing together in jail gave the marchers solidarity and strength to keep going and to come back for more.

Blackmon was the youngest person on the march to Montgomery. With her family and community support, she persevered through the beatings she had received on Bloody Sunday to complete the march. She celebrated her 15th birthday during the course of the march to Montgomery. Meeting concerned and inspiring fellow marchers, some of whom were white, helped propel her to write the story of this part of her life. 

She continued to work in civil rights, having recognized in her younger years that “just because that’s the way things were didn’t mean it had to stay that way forever.” 

Lynda Blackmon Lowery was in attendance at the performance and received a standing ovation. Turning 15 was directed by Jackie Alexander, musical director was Joshuah Campbell, and the reading  was produced by NC Black Rep. Cast members were: Tonya Pinkins, Joseph Johnson, LaShon Hill, Petron Brown, Nola Adepoju, DoMonique Warren, Diane Paukstelis, and Clark Pinyan. The ALS interpreter was Tabitha Allen-Draft.

In conjunction with the program, Democracy North Carolina held a voter registration drive as part of “Finding Holy Ground: Performing Visions of Race and Justice in America, a collaboration between N.C. Black Rep, Wake Forest School of Divinity and Wake the Arts. 

If you missed the staged reading, you have another opportunity to see it this fall. The play will be performed at Wake Forest Tedford Stage on October 27-29 and November 2-5. It will be a joint production of the Wake Forest University Department of Theatre and Dance and the Loire Valley Theatre Festival.

David Winship is from Bristol, Tennessee, and volunteered and attended this year’s International Black Theatre Festival. He is a member of Winston-Salem Writers.