Sunday, April 02, 2006
Pearl River
My maternal grandmother, Pearl O’Neal, was born in 1898 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Tara, the original O’Neal plantation in Mississippi, is not far away. The Pearl River, that forms the border between Mississippi and Lousiana near Lake Pontchartrain, is mentioned by John Lewis in Oh Freedom Over Me
"You know, in spite of growing up in Alabama, where it's not too much different—but Mississippi! It was just—this was the last place," says John Lewis, who now represents Georgia in the U.S. Congress. In 1961, Lewis was 21 and a hero of the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Riders rode buses into the South to challenge whites-only lunch counters and restrooms. Lewis was punched and kicked by South Carolina segregationists. Rioting whites beat him bloody in Montgomery, Alabama. But what scared him was Mississippi. "When you crossed that state line over into Mississippi, it's just this sense of something like the climate changed, the air got warmer and your heart started beating faster. ... Too many bodies had been found, black bodies, had been found in the Pearl River or the Tallahatchee River in the state of Mississippi," says Lewis.
The Hattiesburg Freedom School system, which SNCC Freedom School director Staughton Lynd refered to as the “Mecca of the Freedom School world” had more than 600 students in five schools. During Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, Herbert Randall photographed the project around Hattiesburg:
The Free Southern Theater, that toured throughout the state that year with its production of In White America, was organized by SNCC, COFO, and Tougaloo College as an attempt to “stimulate thought and a new awareness among Negroes in the deep South.” Among the sponsors of the Free Southern Theater were singer Harry Belafonte, authors James Baldwin and Langston Hughes, performers Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Theodore Bikel, and Lincoln Kirstein,
general director of the New York City Ballet. The proposal for the Free Southern Theater originated with SNCC workers Doris Derby, Gilbert Moses, and John O’Neal, and Tougaloo drama instructor William Hutchinson.
John O’Neal, relation to Pearl unknown, was the field secretary for SNCC. At Tougaloo, O'Neal—along with a group of students—had formed the Free Southern Theatre, which was created to integrate art with social change.
Between the time my emigrant ancestor John O’Neal purchased his first African-American slave in South Carolina to the time the now-renowned black playwright John O’Neal established the celebrated playhouse Junebug Productions in New Orleans, a lot of change has happened along the Pearl River. But not enough for the former SNCC activist who shares my ancestor’s name.
In the 2002 Community Arts Network article Drawing the Line at Place
he remarked, “It was during the Spring of 1989. I don't remember clearly where in New Orleans we were when it happened, maybe Maspero's Slave Exchange. Maybe we saw one of those Mammy dolls beckoning the wary tourists. It might have been right after we'd heard the idea about buying one of the old plantations on River Road to make a museum that really shows what life was like in the "good old days." I really don't remember where we were, but I do remember that Jawole Zollar, the visionary leader of the Urban Bush Women, said, "Somebody ought to do something about purging the demons of slavery here in New Orleans.”
The 90-mile long River Road that runs along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge has been dubbed "Cancer Alley" by environmentalists and many of the residents. In addition to a group of predominately low-income African-American communities, it is home to a concentration of more than 130 major petrochemical plants, grain elevators, medical waste incinerators, solid waste landfills and other industrial operations that account for the bulk of toxic chemical releases in Louisiana. Residents face enormously high rates of cancer, miscarriages, birth defects and other health problems. The population of Cancer Alley is reported to have the highest rate of cancer in the nation.
Soon after his discussion with Jawole Zollar, John O'Neal was invited by Pat Bryant, of Gulf Coast Tenants Association, to an organizing meeting with people living on River Road. O'Neal learned that the map of Cancer Alley is a perfect template for the map of the old Mississippi River plantation system. While the nature of the bondage might have changed, he realized that this form of "environmental racism" was just a new face on an old problem.
So begins the story of the Environmental Justice Project, a multi-year, multidisciplinary, multiracial community-arts project planned for 1998 by Junebug Productions, an African-American, community-based theater ensemble in New Orleans founded and directed by John O'Neal. "Environmental racism is the modern demon of slavery that Jawole had been talking about," says EJP Project Director Roxy Wright. "Junebug realized that our job as artists was to help these people struggling to exorcise this demon through environmental justice."
Begun in 1981, Junebug Productions became the successor to the Free Southern Theater, and in many people's eyes, the theatrical legacy of the Civil Rights Movement itself. To me, that’s something worth crossing the Pearl River to see.
"You know, in spite of growing up in Alabama, where it's not too much different—but Mississippi! It was just—this was the last place," says John Lewis, who now represents Georgia in the U.S. Congress. In 1961, Lewis was 21 and a hero of the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Riders rode buses into the South to challenge whites-only lunch counters and restrooms. Lewis was punched and kicked by South Carolina segregationists. Rioting whites beat him bloody in Montgomery, Alabama. But what scared him was Mississippi. "When you crossed that state line over into Mississippi, it's just this sense of something like the climate changed, the air got warmer and your heart started beating faster. ... Too many bodies had been found, black bodies, had been found in the Pearl River or the Tallahatchee River in the state of Mississippi," says Lewis.
The Hattiesburg Freedom School system, which SNCC Freedom School director Staughton Lynd refered to as the “Mecca of the Freedom School world” had more than 600 students in five schools. During Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, Herbert Randall photographed the project around Hattiesburg:
The Free Southern Theater, that toured throughout the state that year with its production of In White America, was organized by SNCC, COFO, and Tougaloo College as an attempt to “stimulate thought and a new awareness among Negroes in the deep South.” Among the sponsors of the Free Southern Theater were singer Harry Belafonte, authors James Baldwin and Langston Hughes, performers Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Theodore Bikel, and Lincoln Kirstein,
general director of the New York City Ballet. The proposal for the Free Southern Theater originated with SNCC workers Doris Derby, Gilbert Moses, and John O’Neal, and Tougaloo drama instructor William Hutchinson.
John O’Neal, relation to Pearl unknown, was the field secretary for SNCC. At Tougaloo, O'Neal—along with a group of students—had formed the Free Southern Theatre, which was created to integrate art with social change.
Between the time my emigrant ancestor John O’Neal purchased his first African-American slave in South Carolina to the time the now-renowned black playwright John O’Neal established the celebrated playhouse Junebug Productions in New Orleans, a lot of change has happened along the Pearl River. But not enough for the former SNCC activist who shares my ancestor’s name.
In the 2002 Community Arts Network article Drawing the Line at Place
he remarked, “It was during the Spring of 1989. I don't remember clearly where in New Orleans we were when it happened, maybe Maspero's Slave Exchange. Maybe we saw one of those Mammy dolls beckoning the wary tourists. It might have been right after we'd heard the idea about buying one of the old plantations on River Road to make a museum that really shows what life was like in the "good old days." I really don't remember where we were, but I do remember that Jawole Zollar, the visionary leader of the Urban Bush Women, said, "Somebody ought to do something about purging the demons of slavery here in New Orleans.”
The 90-mile long River Road that runs along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge has been dubbed "Cancer Alley" by environmentalists and many of the residents. In addition to a group of predominately low-income African-American communities, it is home to a concentration of more than 130 major petrochemical plants, grain elevators, medical waste incinerators, solid waste landfills and other industrial operations that account for the bulk of toxic chemical releases in Louisiana. Residents face enormously high rates of cancer, miscarriages, birth defects and other health problems. The population of Cancer Alley is reported to have the highest rate of cancer in the nation.
Soon after his discussion with Jawole Zollar, John O'Neal was invited by Pat Bryant, of Gulf Coast Tenants Association, to an organizing meeting with people living on River Road. O'Neal learned that the map of Cancer Alley is a perfect template for the map of the old Mississippi River plantation system. While the nature of the bondage might have changed, he realized that this form of "environmental racism" was just a new face on an old problem.
So begins the story of the Environmental Justice Project, a multi-year, multidisciplinary, multiracial community-arts project planned for 1998 by Junebug Productions, an African-American, community-based theater ensemble in New Orleans founded and directed by John O'Neal. "Environmental racism is the modern demon of slavery that Jawole had been talking about," says EJP Project Director Roxy Wright. "Junebug realized that our job as artists was to help these people struggling to exorcise this demon through environmental justice."
Begun in 1981, Junebug Productions became the successor to the Free Southern Theater, and in many people's eyes, the theatrical legacy of the Civil Rights Movement itself. To me, that’s something worth crossing the Pearl River to see.
