Facing protests, Broadway production The Scottsboro Boys will close this Sunday. Tom Matlack argues that the show was misunderstood.
When I was 8, while my classmates were learning their multiplication tables, I was thrown into the back of a paddy wagon and dragged into court. My dad—a Quaker activist—and I had committed civil disobedience on a crisp fall day in Western Massachusetts.
As a little boy who just needed to go to the bathroom, I tried, futilely, to take a leak into a single, seatless toilet in front of a cell full of men. Those few hours behind bars scared me. I didn’t want to go back. While many others who had run-ins with the law at such a tender age went on to serve time, I never stepped foot in prison again as a young man.
But a quarter-century after my childhood arrest, I did go back to jail repeatedly, this time as a visitor. I went to South Bay House of Corrections in Boston, a maximum-security prison in Connecticut, and ultimately, Sing Sing. Sitting with a room full of lifers, deep in the bowels of that stone structure “up the river,” two things struck me: the inmates were nearly all black, and they looked so young. When they went around the room to introduce themselves, it brought tears to my eyes to hear that even the youngest-looking boys had been inside for more than a decade.
Nationally, unemployment among black men ages 16–24 stands at 35 percent. Sixty-five percent of black boys grow up in fatherless homes. Of the prison population of 2,424,279 inmates, 44 percent—more than a million—are black; there are 919,000 black men enrolled in college. If current trends continue, one in three black male babies born today will end up in prison.
We Americans ignore the obvious because it is far too uncomfortable to consider: Martin Luther King’s dream is still far from being realized.
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Into this myth of racial progress enters The Scottsboro Boys, a Broadway production that debuted on October 31 at the Lyceum Theater. (Full disclosure: I helped finance the play, in honor of my parents who travelled to Mississippi in the Freedom Summer of 1964, and to honor the African-American inmates with whom I have spent time in ancient human cages like Sing Sing.)
The Scottsboro Boys, about the nine young men who were falsely accused and sentenced to death for raping two white women in 1931, provides a screen upon which our unresolved racism is uncomfortably projected. It sticks its finger into the still-open wound that is race in this country, forcing the audience to watch the boys dance and sing in a minstrel format as they struggle to find their true voice.
The show flips the traditional minstrel show on its head, using it to humanize, rather than caricaturize, the participants. In the opening moments of the play, Haywood Patterson, the eldest Scottsboro boy, asks, “Can we tell it like it really happened? … This time, can we tell the truth?” And by the final scene of the play, the blackface is gone. The minstrel show is over. And we see real men telling a real story of injustice and racism.
Watching The Scottsboro Boys, I was made painfully aware of my own racism. I judge people by their skin color, their religion, their sexual orientation. The fact is, we all do; it doesn’t make us bad people—it makes us human. But if we are ever going to get anywhere on the topic of race, we have to stop sugarcoating the discourse. We can’t let the election of a black president obscure the fact that we’re still locking up all the black men in this country.
“The first time we ever did a reading of the show was the day after Obama was elected, that Wednesday morning, sitting with a group of black men in a rehearsal studio, reading the script,” the show’s writer, David Thompson, told me recently. “And for a second there, it was as if there had been a seismic shift in the world. We thought: ‘Is this piece relevant anymore? Have we discovered that we’re on the other side of the conversation?’ … We realized very quickly that, no, what we’re having now is a very veiled discussion. We’re using new words to discuss racism. We’re screaming ‘You lie!’ on the floor of the Senate to a black president, because somehow that seems appropriate.
“That’s why the minstrel show combines that ability to have that strange laugh that you would have at the expense of others,” Thompson continued. “In South Park, when you’re watching something that’s just so politically incorrect, you still laugh, and then you think, ‘Well, did I really laugh at that?’ Because it demands that you question something.”
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A group in New York calling itself the Freedom Party—a bastardization of the Freedom Democratic Party, for which my parents risked their lives to help blacks get the right to vote in 1964—launched a much-publicized protest against The Scottsboro Boys, picketing the theater and calling upon patrons to boycott. The protests certainly contributed to its demise—it will close on Sunday, December 12.
None of the protestors had seen the play. The group’s leader, Charles Barron, a one-time gubernatorial candidate, organized the protests to raise his own personal profile, while attacking artists who are asking tough questions about racial injustice—the same racial injustice that the Freedom Party claims to be fighting.
My question to the protestors is the one I ask you: When are you going to stop the minstrel show that is race in America, wipe away the blackface, and start telling the truth, no matter how uncomfortable that might be? It will always be easier to lie when the system reinforces myth.
While the play was being protested outside, the Theater Development Fund bought out two performances for high-school students, most of them black and who had never seen a live theater production. The kids were leaning forward in their seats, cell phones off, fully engaged in the story. “They were laughing, they were screaming, they were gasping, they were laughing louder than I’d ever heard anybody laugh,” Thompson recalled. “And they were more live than I’ve ever heard an audience, especially toward the end.”
Afterward, there was a Q&A with the actors. One kid in the balcony shouted, “If you were in a situation where you had the ability to get out of … to get parole … if you just lied, would you do it?” Somebody else asked, “What was it like to put on blackface for the first time? And what’s it feel like to take it off?” Another kid asked, “Now that you’ve been in the show, what is your opinion about the death penalty?”
The kids got the play at the deepest level, even when the adults outside did not. They were prepared to ask the tough questions we all too often shy away from. Part of our collective immigrant heritage—whether Irish, Italian, Chinese, Mexican, or Africans brought here as slaves—is to leave our children a better world than the one we endured. Are we really prepared to leave them, black and white children both, a legacy that perpetuates a fundamental fiction about race in America?
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Read Tom Matlack’s full conversation with The Scottsboro Boys writer David Thompson.
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Tom Matlack, together with James Houghton and Larry Bean, published an anthology of stories about defining moments in men’s lives — The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood. It was how the The Good Men Project first began. Want to buy the book? Click here. Want to learn more? Here you go.
“As long as you think that you are white, there is no hope for you.” James Baldwin I think there is a notion that history happens to Americans and black history happens to black people. John Brown destroyed the notion that people cannot take up the struggles of others as their own in this country. Instead of saying that white people can never understand black experience, why don’t we acknowledge our shared history in the creation of acceptance of the fiction of some difference in people due to skin color. I say to people, “I don’t think of you as… Read more »
As one of the producers of this show, I need to address a misconception that seems to be fueling this fire. The producing team is not all white. There are several African American producers who have stuck their necks out to help get this show on Broadway because they believe in its message and in the need to have this conversation. The response from their own community has been very painful to them, particularly from those of the Freedom Party who are uninformed as they refuse to see the show-despite numerous attempts on the behalf of the producers to invite… Read more »
If you are going to do something this racially inflammatory… its probably a good idea to engage a conversation with the community before making such a play. And to give the community a fair chance to see the production. As it is… Broadway plays are mostly for white people. And it’s a minstrel show… so altogether you can see how this whole thing got misinterpreted…
I was in NY on business recently, and made it a priority to see “Scottsboro Boys.” Seated in the row behind me were a group of 50-to-60ish ladies who chatted to each other about how they’d *loved* “Jersey Boys” and “Wicked,” but didn’t know anything about the show they were about to see (although one heard that it had been written by “the people who did ‘Chicago’). I kept an ear open for their comments as “Scottsboro” unfolded, but they were too engrossed for any further chit-chat. Finally, one whispered excitedly, “I never expected anything like this! This is one… Read more »
I was at the show tonight and for the life of me I just can’t imagine how it can be interpretted as racist. So much is a straight telling of the historical facts. When Patterson talks about his mother being raped on account of the lie he told as a boy on his front porch (which is why he is determined to tell the truth even if he has to pay with his life) the actor was crying and the mixed audience right along with him. I met the cast afterwards who hugged me for having written the article and… Read more »
Well I guess the solution is go and see your show, Jeff.
I think the show did exactly what it was supposed to do—get people to talk about this horrible situation.
Bravo to the musical! I’m getting all of the Black men in my life to see it before it leaves on the 12th. I’m heartbroken that it’s leaving. We need this discourse right now. Even in 2010.
As a composer and lyricist of an upcoming new musical treatment of the Scottsboro Boys and being related (however distant) to Samuel Leibowitz (my grandfather’s cousin), I have lived with this historical tragedy most of my life. I started writing the music and lyrics over fifteen years ago. The treatment of the Scottsboro Boys in terms of style, technique and finding a historical connection to present the “boys” using the method of the minstrel show to convey the story through its witty banter and gospel style, places the emphasis and focus on the style of presentation and in my opinion… Read more »
1. Anyone who thinks that THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS “extends” the minstrel tradition clearly doesn’t have a sense of how degrading real minstrelsy was. Being black doesn’t automatically make someone an expert on the history of racism. If your issue is that the “boys” are portrayed as unsophisticated and poorly educated, as they undoubtedly were, then what’s really bothering you is the uncomfortable truth about what being black in this country really means. You are offended because you identify with the characters, and you don’t like what you see. That’s not the fault of the show’s creative team, those are your… Read more »
I just saw this play tonight and all I can say is I wish people in the Broadway would stick up for this show. Whoopi said that its the best show that she’s seen in 10 years, so I’m going to need her to fight for this show. Why are people allowing this obviously misinformed group bully them out of Broadway. I’m an African American woman that thought the play was superbly done. The minstrel format makes it uncomfortable to stomach. That’s what racism does to those that don’t speak up but just sit back and look. I need the… Read more »
Thanks to all who have been participating in this conversation. I want to make clear that all I REALLY know is that there is a problem. I have my person experience of being inside prison and talking to individual people. But I don’t claim to have the ultimate answer. I do feel that the criticism of SB is misfounded, but then it is Art and for those who have seen the play and find it offensive I am sorry. But I do hope that it sparks a conversation about what we should be doing to change what is an unacceptable… Read more »
I am living in NYC in 2010 where companies like SapientNitro and other advertising agencies do not hire many if any blacks at all. The advertising industry specifically and corporate America in general seems to have a problem finding qualified black talent but Bloomberg can find an unqualified white woman to head the NYC public school. I am not clear on what is happening hear but it seems like an assault on blacks in NYC and in America in general. It seems like an Obama backlash. This play would be insignificant standing on its own but in light of the… Read more »
The protests were completely valid, if not called for. Look at the demographic make-up of the producers, choreographers, and everyone profiting from this show. They are all old, affluent, and white. This show isn’t using overt racism, but covert. This show doesn’t reclaim the minstrel show for African Americans, but rather extends the minstrel tradition further. White people of privilege are putting African Americans of less power under their control and using them for their profit. Their show may not intentionally be racist, but it is. The protesters aren’t/weren’t missing the point, but are seeing much more than you–obliviously. Not… Read more »
I am writing as a low-middle class white woman and mother of three. I have had the honor of seeing this production at the Vineyard, the Guthrie and am thrilled to have gotten tickets to the final performance on Sunday. Full disclosure – I know someone in the cast, further disclosure – I found the money to pay for all of those tickets… The first time I saw the production, the audience was a rainbow. I sat there for the first thirty minutes or so thinking, “who am I, this white chick, to sit and have empathy for these characters;… Read more »
As Chris Dimond said about the show on his blog, “Years down the road, pundits will shake their heads and say, ‘The show simply didn’t find its audience.’ I’ll argue differently. The audience simply didn’t find its show.” Hopefully a tour will help bring the show to its audience.
Find the full article here: http://koomandimond.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/how-i-failed-the-scottsboro-boys/
I have a hard time thinking of a more effective way of starting necessary conversation than good, provocative art.
I heard it said once that: “it is almost impossible to have a public conversation about race without being accused of racism.” But what’s the better alternative? Is it not to try, because of fear of saying the wrong words or producing the wrong art form? Remain silent, because you’re worried someone will come back and argue with you? I would like to invite anyone who believes this column should have more depth to write something for us with more depth. We publish counter-arguments to our articles all the time. And for those of you who would like more of… Read more »
@john hall and Joe, I love that this article has impassioned you enough to respond. That alone justifies its existence. If it inspired you to carry this conversation into your interaction with someone else, it would be certifiably validated with returns. Granted, I don’t know what you do in your daily lives—what part is lived as educator and what part activist—but I feel that if this show inspires such conversation, then it has succeeded as art. It has ignited a flame where none was, and stoked those that were into something greater. And save for those protecting the status quo,… Read more »
Tom, you might want to check your sources before you start blaming the Freedom Party, who had little to do with the closing of your precious show. Some of the protesters did see your precious show and had issues with the framing device, get over it. http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/theater/say_farewell_to_the_scottsboro_boys_4hjrIgxTYOK6xsGrzI4WKL After seeing it at the Vineyard and on Broadway, I would have to agree with Joe and Mike in that it dehumanizes on many levels and this creative team who thought they were being so clever, we get what you were going for, bad taste on many levels. Most of the pro-Scottsboro Boys… Read more »
The montage itself didn’t seem offensive. You have to understand that black people are very sensitive when it comes performances done in blackface and minstrel-like settings (Tyler Perry movies and BET shows aside). If I were a producer, I would be careful in presenting such a production.
That said, it may have been a fine play. It would have done well with black audiences if the blackface wasn’t used. Kudos for trying.
I will certainly have to concede with joe on this one–this is absolute rubbish. This article has as much depth as this production does as they both lack any substantial critic of our social economic atmosphere. In the first, as a reader, I am certainly skeptical of this authors praise for this production. Considering the fact that he, by his own admittance, helped finances this production, he should not be the one clamoring to defend it. Financial markets have a habit of critiquing owners who tote the “wonders” of their companies; in this instance, we should expect no difference. In… Read more »
this is absolute rubbish. can a play with white writers and directors and financiers (obviously) make the nuanced critique that you claim? can it deconstruct stereotypes and use previously oppressive mediums (ie minstrel shows) to humanize? or is this yet ANOTHER case of a white missionary believing that it is in THEIR hands to humanize a black man. this is so full of faulty logic that i cannot even begin to consider it. for one, why should we trust one of the financiers to take a critical stance on a work of art? is laughter always (or ever) the best… Read more »
Joe, I think the author is pretty clear that black Americans were not willing immigrants. To answer your question, laughter is very often the best way (or sometimes the only way) to promote change. Most would agree that satire has always been at the forefront of progressive change.
I don’t think this is really ‘satire’… minstrel shows were an outright mockery of black people. There should be a show about the history of minstrel shows… and a different show about the Scottsboro men. Combining the two… insensitive, at best.
I am not connected with the show or the case in any direct way, but I had the privilege to see a performance days after it opened on Broadway. For numerous reasons, it is one of the most compelling evenings I have ever spent in the theater. I am shocked by the closing notice – shocked that audiences aren’t rushing to see this remarkable production, performed by an amazing (and I rarely use that word because it has lost its meaning with overuse) company, masterfully guided by Susan Stroman and with a classic, brilliant Kander and Ebb score. I hope… Read more »
Tom, Your parents gave you a major gift when they had you participate at such a young age. My congratulations to them. And thank you for your writing which points out the stark statistics of being a young black man in America. As a country, we are wasting a precious human resource. The problems are complex, but doesn’t it make more sense to spend money on education for 10 years than on incarceration for 20 to life? I worked for a year in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, going once a week to tutor inmates in reading, writing, and arithmetic so… Read more »
Thank you for your comments. I, too am connected with the Scottsboro Boys, as my grandfather’s cousin was Samuel Leibowitz. Fifteen years ago, I wrote a musical based on the Scottsboro Boys and had been revising it and updating it for years. At the time, I did not realize that Kander and Ebb had the same idea in development.. This stopped my train so to speak. I put my heart and soul into writing this musical, and thought the Broadway production focused a bit too much on the minstrel show as an entertainment device as did too many of the… Read more »
I actually was a patron of this play. I appreciated the effort, however, I felt the play chose the wrong format to tell this story. While a minstrel show is a clever in its design, historically it has been known to degrade and mock Black Americans. Thus, to include this format in the telling of this story, which needs to be told, confuses me. Could the producers be that out of touch? Included in the playbill was a history of the minstrel show but no real mention of the negative undertones it has on the black community. I don’t doubt… Read more »