A new play by Mike Wiley Productions’ The Parchman Hour will be presented at 6:30 p.m., March 10, in Jobe Hall Auditorium on the Delta State University campus. Wiley was last in the Delta when he presented his one-man show about the murder of Emmett Till at Delta State University three years ago.
The newest work commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders. In 1961, the original 13 riders boarded a bus in Washington, DC bound for New Orleans via Mississippi and Alabama. They barely made it out of Alabama alive. Over the course of the next three months, approximately 300 other riders took up the mantle and followed the path of those first brave few. Mobs brutally assaulted many. Others were arrested and, instead of posting bail, chose to serve sentences in one of the most brutal prisons in the South, Parchman Farm, proving the Freedom Riders and the movement to desegregate interstate travel would not be deterred.
Mimi Real, an original Freedom Rider in 1961, remembers “Did you know that at Parchman, to pass the time and to keep our spirits up, we ‘invented’ a radio program? I don’t recall that we named it, but ‘The Parchman Hour’ would have been a good name. Each cell had to contribute a short “act” (singing a song, telling a joke, reading from the Bible — the only book we were allowed) and in between acts we had ‘commercials’ for the products we lived with every day, like the prison soap, the black-and-white striped skirts, the awful food, etc. We did this every evening, as I recall; it gave us something to do during the day, thinking up our cell’s act for the evening.”
Mike Wiley’s The Parchman Hour commemorates the Freedom Rides by imagining their imprisonment at Parchman. Presented in the style of the variety shows of yesteryear, this moving production explores three of the tensest months of 1961. The Parchman Hour brings to the stage powerful oral histories and conversations from the Freedom Rides’ most iconic protagonists and antagonists.
Originally produced by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and The Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Parchman Hour is a celebration of bravery and a call to action through remembrance, leaving the audience asking, “Who stood up for me? Moreover, for whom can I stand up for today? Who needs my words, my song, my voice?”
The Parchman Hour presentation is free and open to the public, but its producers recommend reserving a place to make sure there is seating for all.
Please call 601-354-0515 (ext 14) to make a reservation. This presentation is made possible by the Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church, and is co-sponsored by the Delta State University Delta Center for Culture and Learning and the Delta State University Diversity Committee.
