“The Parchman Hour,” the songs and stories of the ’61 Freedom Riders, will be presented at 7 p.m. Monday at the Kinston-Lenoir County Performing Arts Center on the Kinston High School campus.
The performance is presented by the Community Council for the Arts. Admission is $5 for adults, free for students, with tickets available at the arts center, 400 N. Queen St.
Actor and playwright Mike Wiley has spent the last decade fulfilling his mission to bring educational theatre to young audiences and communities across the country.
He started his own production company to do so, and “The Parchman Hour” is one of his most recent plays, an ensemble production celebrating the bravery and determination of the Freedom Riders who risked their lives to desegregate.
In 1961, the original 13 riders boarded a bus in Washington, D.C., bound for New Orleans via Mississippi and Alabama. They barely made it out of Alabama alive.
Over the next three months, nearly 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.
Presented in the style of the variety shows of yesteryear, this production explores three of the tensest months of 1961. “The Parchman Hour” brings to the stage powerful oral histories and conversations from the Freedom Riders’ most iconic protagonists and antagonists.
Wiley has a Master of Fine Arts from UNC and is the 2010 Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and UNC. He has presented numerous school and community performances; appeared on Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel and National Geographic Channel; and been featured in “Our State” magazine, on PBS’ “North Carolina Now” and WUNC’s “The State of Things.”
For information, call the Community Council for the Arts at 252-527-2517.
