Tougaloo and Brown on the World Stage

For over half a century, the performing arts have been an important space for Tougaloo and Brown students to connect, play, think, move, and grow together. Two initiatives demonstrate how they used performance to affirm Black life, learn Black history and culture, and mobilize to constitute new, more inclusive, ways of being in the world: the 1968-69 Black Arts Festivals and the 2012-2022 Black Lavender Theater Intensives.

In 1963-64, the Tougaloo College Drama Workshop birthed the Free Southern Theater (FST), the political theater arm of the Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee (SNCC). At the time, many considered Tougaloo College “the cradle of the local Civil Rights Movement,” a “safer haven” for activists organizing the 1964 Mississippi education and voter registration drive (Fleming 2022, 92; Hamlin XXX). Yet as they mobilized to end Jim Crow segregation, SNCC leaders recognized that “[b]y themselves, protest and political action [could] not sufficiently alter the present situation” (“Theater Group to Preview” 1964, 6). FST believed theater stimulated “critical thought necessary for effective participation in a democratic society,” and that their work could fill the “educational and cultural voids” produced by anti-Black racism (“Theater Group to Preview” 1964, 6). Gilbert Moses directed FST with co-founders Doris Derby and John O’Neal, and additional support from Tougaloo drama professor William (Bill) Hutchinson (Free Southern Theater 1969; “William ‘Bill’ Hutchinson Obituary” 2021). They wrote and toured original (free) documentary dramas to Freedom Schools, churches, and community centers across Mississippi, teaching African American history and encouraging audiences to fight for their freedom (Fleming 2022). 1 1 First foot note. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec quis elit aliquam arcu bibendum elementum id vestibulum mi. Donec finibus, tortor in pellentesque rhoncus, arcu nibh ullamcorper massa, vitae eleifend dui est non dolor.

In addition to nurturing Black theater and political organizing, Tougaloo became a site for African American literary arts. In 1968, Afro-Caribbean lesbian writer Audre Lorde facilitated a poetry workshop on campus, culminating in the publication of an edited volume of student poetry called Pound that included two of Lorde’s poems (Pound 1969). Lorde taught Tougaloo students to “[b]e who you are and act on your love,” powerful lessons that one student – Edgar Bishop – carried with him to Providence later that year (Gumbs 2020, 142). 2 2 Second footnote. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec quis elit aliquam arcu bibendum elementum id vestibulum mi. Donec finibus, tortor in pellentesque rhoncus, arcu nibh ullamcorper massa, vitae eleifend dui est non dolor.

In sharp contrast, when Sheryl Brissett Chapman (Pembroke’71) and a small cohort of other African American students arrived at Brown in the late 1960s, they encountered a “very white, hostile world.” African Americans constituted less than five percent of the student body due to discriminatory admissions practices. There were few Black faculty, staff, or administrators, and fewer courses on the histories, intellectual traditions, and cultures of people of African descent. Many on campus viewed Black students with skepticism, dismissing them as “experiments” doomed to fail. Off-campus, the war in Vietnam, political assassinations, mass organizing to end poverty and racial discrimination as well as the burgeoning movements for women’s and LGBTQ rights made every day feel charged . 3 3 test test test (Chapman 2023).

Chapman knew something had to change so that she and the approximately 80 other Black students at Brown could survive. That change started when she connected with two other Black students – James Borders (Brown’71) and Edgar Bishop (Tougaloo’71), who had participated in Lorde’s Tougaloo workshop. The three would produce some of the first Black cultural events on campus, and initiate an artistic exchange between the two schools that celebrated and affirmed Black histories and cultures, nurtured students, and enriched both institutions. 4 4 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec quis elit aliquam arcu bibendum elementum id vestibulum mi. Donec finibus, tortor in pellentesque rhoncus, arcu nibh ullamcorper massa, vitae eleifend dui est non dolor.

The Black Arts Festivals

Black students needed creative, intellectual spaces that valued Black people and Black culture and where they could work to end anti-Black racism. In the fall of 1968, Chapman, Bishop, and Borders gathered a cohort of other students to plan a series of artistic events with the support of Brown theatre professor James Barnhill and Bill Hutchinson, a former Tougaloo professor now at Rhode Island College.

The first Black Arts Festival occurred later that year, quickly followed by a second festival in March 1969. The festivals’ Pan-Africanist programming included modern dance, South African folk tales, soul music, R&B, and African jazz. Opportunities to learn Black history and organize politically interspersed the live performances. Just as important as the headliners were the soul food banquets, African fashion shows, and panel discussions with local and national Black leaders such as poet Haki Madhubuti (then known as Don L. Lee), jazz pianist Horace Silver, and the executive director of the Southern Christian 5 5 test test test Leadership Council, Hosea Williams (Trowbridge 1969, 1, 3). Inspired by Black Arts Movement artists, they soon began staging plays by leading figures in the movement including Ed Bullins, Amiri Baraka, and Ben Caldwell, and writing original plays (“Black Theater Workshop” 1969). “The ground was shifting,” Chapman explained (2023). Black students were determined to “create new political awareness,” build “the foundation for a new society of Black people,” and “expose the evils overt and covert of [America’s] sick society” (Kenny 1969). Drawing upon their collective knowledge of Black history, culture, and organizing, they used theater to create space for individual and collective growth, saving students’ lives and changing Brown University.

The Black Lavender Experience

Over the next four decades, the struggle for Black freedom continued as students, universities, and the nation changed. From 1970-2010, the fields of Theatre and Black Studies, including scholarship on African American performance, expanded significantly. Tougaloo, like many HBCUs, faced financial challenges that forced it to innovate. By the early 2000s, Civil Rights organizing had receded as had the arts on campus, and Tougaloo was better known as a training ground for future Black doctors and teachers. At Brown, student organizing led to the creation of the Department of Africana Studies, 6 6 Kenny, Mike. 1969. “Black Theater Workshop: An Ambitious New Expression.” including the Rites and Reason Theatre, a center for the research, development, and production of Black performance; yet the number of African American students remained in the single digits.

In a 2011-2012 Brown-Tougaloo planning meeting, Karen Allen Baxter, then the senior managing director of the Rites and Reason Theatre, suggested that Tougaloo students and faculty join Black Lavender, a course about Black LGBTQ theatre taught by Brown professor Elmo Terry-Morgan’74. Black Lavender focused on what Terry-Morgan described as “histories, experiences, thoughts and issues” of LGBTQ+ folks of African descent through the lens of performance (Terry-Morgan 2015). Coursework included opportunities to read, see, and create live theatre, as well as a weeklong performance event called the Black Lavender Experience (BLX) that showcased student works alongside presentations by Black LGBTQ artists and scholars. Rebecca Hardin-Thrift, a Tougaloo English professor, agreed (Terry-Morgan 2024). 7 7 test test test

In the fall of 2012, Brown broadcast BLX performances to Tougaloo via then-relatively new live streaming. The weeklong program included panel discussions, film showings, productions of Brown student and alumni works, and social events as well as performances of Mississippi-born playwright Renita Martin’s Lo She Comes, Sharon Bridgforth’s experimental jazz poem Dyke/Warrior-Prayers, and Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwime’s play A Missionary Position about homophobia in Uganda. Afterward, faculty and students from both schools met via live stream to discuss and reflect upon the work. As the session began, Karen Allen Baxter read an email from Tougaloo stating that the BLX livestream was one of the first public LGBTQ events on their campus in recent history. By the end of the Intensive, Tougaloo students and faculty committed to establishing a gay-straight alliance on campus to continue the work (Terry-Morgan 2012). 8 8 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec quis elit aliquam arcu bibendum elementum id vestibulum mi. Donec finibus, tortor in pellentesque rhoncus, arcu nibh ullamcorper massa, vitae eleifend dui est non dolor. More than four decades after Tougaloo students helped their peers at Brown establish formal spaces for Black art, community, politics, and scholarship in Providence, the exchange opened up opportunities for study and dialogue about race, gender, and sexuality in Mississippi.

Over the next ten years, the BLX Theatre Intensive continued to explore questions of gender, sexuality, race, belonging, and performance. In the spring of 2013, Tougaloo staged Martin’s Lo She Comes, which tells the story of a devoted sister seeking justice after her gay brother is killed, and a contingency from Brown traveled to Mississippi to see the show. In subsequent years, Tougaloo and Brown students met in Providence to study with emerging and established Black LBGTQ artists from Africa, the Caribbean, and other parts of the Diaspora, including Ugandan-American playwright Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwime; cultural critic and music scholar Greg Tate; playwrights Shirlene Holmes, Christina Anderson, Lenelle Moise, Sharon Bridgforth, Djola Branner, and Chisa Hutchinson; scholar/artist E. Patrick Johnson, one of the founders of the field of Black Queer Studies in the U.S.; trans scholar/activists Azure D. Osborne-Lee and Travis Alabanza; filmmaker Yoruba Richen; and performers Daniel Alexander Jones and Stacyann Chin (“The Black Lavender Experience” 2018). The decision to invite artist-scholars from Africa and the Diaspora ensured that conversations about blackness, race, gender, and sexuality extended beyond the boundaries of the U.S.

The Intensive has not been without its challenges. Organizing events requires open and ongoing communication about goals, expectations, personnel, logistics, timelines, resources, and other needs. At times, participants have struggled to be on the same page. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the collaboration. For ten years, however, a cohort of dedicated artists, educators, students, and activists found powerful ways to engage in pressing dialogues about Blackness, gender, and sexuality in ways that continue to reverberate today. For Black LGBTQ students who had few, if any, positive role models of Black LGBTQ life, the Intensive has saved lives. Sharon Bridgforth, a BLX featured artist and longtime collaborator, affirmed that the Intensive taught participants and audiences that “people have fought and died” for the right to live openly and to express their full humanity (2024). This life-affirming, intergenerational site nurtured LGBTQ folks of African descent and their allies, engaging them in individual and collective study and political organizing to further the Black Freedom struggle.

The Journey

When three Tougaloo-Brown students gathered in Providence in the late 1960s hoping to start a Black arts program, they could not have imagined the twists and turns of the journey. Though the Black Arts Festival and BLX Theatre Intensives pose just two examples from the decades-long collaboration, they affirm that every day, whether on play stages or standing on the stage of life, participants in the Brown-Tougaloo Exchange have used performance to fight for a more just and more equitable world where we all can know and express our full humanity.

Endnotes

Thank you to Allison Levy and Kenvi Phillips for the opportunity. Thanks also to Christopher West in the John Hay Special Collections, Paul Rochford in Brown’s Media Services, and Kathy Moyer in Africana Studies for helping me locate material for this article. Thanks especially to Sheryl Brissett Chapman, James Borders, Elmo Terry-Morgan, Karen Allen Baxter, Renita Martin, Sharon Bridgforth, Francoise Hamlin, and all of the Brown and Tougaloo students who shared their artistry and their genius.