SUPPLEMENTARY STUDY GUIDE
for
Caroline, or Change
Philadelphia Premiere
Book and Lyrics by TONY KUSHNER
Music by JEANINE TESORI
Directed by TERRENCE J. NOLEN
On the F. Otto Haas Stage
March 8 - April 8, 2007
Additional copies of this study guide are available online at www.ardentheatre.org.
THEATRE
An Educational Tool
Theatre has the power as an educational tool to offer students a view into time periods,
personal psyches and social contexts that they would not otherwise have the chance to
experience. The theatre is a place of observation and reflection where students are able to
actively immerse themselves into their education. When approached with an open mind
and respect, theatre presents an opportunity for all of us to learn and grow.
It is our goal to give students and teachers an educational window into the world of
theatre with the hope of encouraging a beneficial experience for everyone. Topics
covered within the study guide:
o
o
o
o
Historical background
Prevalent social issues
Information on the playwright
Discussion questions
Don’t miss the last show of
our
2006/2007 Season!
for more information log on to
www.ardentheatre.org
The Lookingglass Theatre
Company’s
Lookingglass Alice
By Lewis Carroll
Adapted and Directed by David
Catlin
On the F. Otto Haas Stage
May 10 to June 10
Performance Policies and Procedures
WHEN TO ARRIVE AT THE THEATRE We recommend you arrive at the theatre at
least 30 minutes prior to the performance to allow time for seating. This is a professional
theatre production and will start at the scheduled time.
BUS DROP OFF AND PARKING Buses may load and unload on 2nd Street in front of
the theatre. Enclosed is information regarding bus parking.
SEAT ASSIGNMENTS (10am matinees only) Due to the number of students attending
each student matinee performance, we will not print tickets. Schools will be seated as a
group. We ask that chaperones come prepared with a count of the number of students
seeing the performance that day. For reasons of safety, efficiency and courtesy, we
request that students do not trade seats. We also request that chaperones and teachers do
not sit together but sit evenly distributed throughout the students within your block.
LATECOMERS Latecomers will be seated at the discretion of the House Management
staff. Students or chaperones that leave during the performance may not be able to rejoin
their group due to accessibility.
BACKPACKS, CAMERAS, AND WALKMANS Backpacks, cameras, and walkmans
are strictly prohibited in the theatre. We request that these items be left at school or on
the bus, as the Arden has no storage facility available.
FOOD, DRINK, CANDY, AND GUM There is absolutely no food, drink, candy, or
gum allowed in the theatre. Please leave snacks and lunches on the bus. Students will be
asked to leave the theatre to remove any food items or the items will be taken and not
returned. We do not have the facilities for groups to eat lunch before or after the
performance.
AUDIENCE ETIQUETTE Student performances can be the most demanding and
rewarding audiences an acting ensemble can face. A theatre performance requires
audience behavior different from that in a movie theater. Please review theatre etiquette
with your students before attending the performance. If any student is being so disruptive
as to interfere with the performers or other audience members, the chaperone will be
asked to remove that student.
•
A theatre performance is a time to think inwardly, not to share your thoughts aloud.
Talking during the performance can be very disruptive. Please be respectful. Also turn
off any watches, cell phones or anything that might make noise during the performance.
•
No food, drink, candy, or gum is permitted inside the theatre.
•
Theatre is a community experience. Let the performers know you enjoy the show by
applauding and laughing at appropriate times.
Caroline, or Change
Book and Lyrics by Tony Kushner
Music by Jeanine Tesori
Directed by Terrence J. Nolen
CAST
CAROLINE THIBODEAUX
THE WASHING MACHINE
RADIO 1
RADIO 2
RADIO 3
NOAH GELLMAN
THE DRYER, THE BUS
GRANDMA GELLMAN
GRANDPA GELLMAN
ROSE STOPNICK GELLMAN
STUART GELLMAN
DOTTY MOFFETT
THE MOON
EMMIE THIBODEAUX
JACKIE THIBODEAUX
JOE THIBODEAUX
MR. STOPNICK
Joilet Harris
Ade Laoye
Marsha Lawson
Tallia Brinson
Danielle Herbert
Griffin Back
Jay Pierce
Maureen Torsney-Weir
Russell Leib
Sherri Edelen
Adam Heller
Kelly J. Rucker
Thursday Farrar
Elyse McKay Taylor
Nicholas Blake Trawick
Malik Burrell
Alan Kutner
DIRECTION:
DIRECTOR
MUSIC DIRECTOR
STAGE MANAGER
ASST to the DIRECTOR
ASST to the MUSIC DIRECTOR
ASST to the STAGE MANAGER
Terrence J. Nolen
Eric Ebbenga
John David Flak
Na Tanya Davina Stewart
Davis Ames
Sarah Strehle
DESIGNERS:
SCENIC DESIGNER
COSTUME DESIGNER
LIGHTING DESIGNER
SOUND DESIGNER
James Kronzer
Rosemarie E. McKelvey
Justin Townsend
Jorge Cousineau
PLOT SYPNOPSIS
This almost entirely sung musical
takes place between the months of
November and December in Lake
Charles, Louisiana in 1963. As the play
begins, Caroline is sitting in the
basement of her employers, the
Gellmans, doing laundry. She sings that
she is living underwater in this
basement, since Louisiana is below sea
level. The brand new washing machine
tries to console her, while the song on
the radio shares her woes.
Noah, the son of the household
enters the basement and tells the
audience that he thinks of Caroline as
the President of the United States, since
she runs everything in his household.
Caroline asks him to light her cigarette, a daily ritual between the two of them. She
warns him not to start smoking when he’s older, and then shoos him out of the hot
basement. Alone again and antagonized by the heat pumping dryer she laments the
course of her life; she is divorced and still a maid at 39. She barely makes a living, and
wonders if she can make ends meet on so little pay.
Later, as she is about to leave for the day, Rose Stopnick, Stuart Gellman’s new
wife, asks her to take home some of the extra food they have; her children will appreciate
it. Caroline counters that they hate the smell of stuffed cabbage and won’t eat it.
Outside, Noah’s paternal grandparents point out that Noah’s mother smoked too many
cigarettes, and that’s why she died.
Back inside, Rose wonders about Noah and his shyness. He joins Caroline in the
basement and helps her finish up her work. Caroline explains that God created cancer to
test his mother, and to test him, too. He leaves, satisfied. In his practice room, Stuart
tells his son that the Gellmans don’t believe in God. Caroline emerges from the basement
and tells Rose that she is leaving for the night. She goes outside to wait for the bus.
Alone in his room, Noah declares that he hates Rose.
Rose calls her father on the phone. She tells him that she’s adjusting to Southern
life, but that Noah keeps leaving change in his pockets, and that really bothers her. She
worries what Caroline must think about a boy who’s so careless with his money. She
asserts that she can’t give her maid a raise because they’re “just plain folk.” Rose
wonders why he obsesses about the maid when she herself is clearly miserable. She
corrects herself, saying she’s not miserable; she only misses the Upper West Side and
Stuart’s ex-wife, Betty, who she reveals was her best friend,
At the bus stop, Caroline meets her friend Dotty, who is also a maid, but has
started taking night classes. She wants to know why Caroline is so tight-lipped. Caroline
says she is too tired to talk. Dotty asks how Noah is doing, and Caroline replies that it’s
not her job to watch the boy. Dotty wants to know why Caroline has become so
unfriendly. Caroline says that Dotty has changed, with her high-minded college ways
and her new boyfriend. Dotty responds that Caroline is the one who’s changed; she’s
becoming “pinched and pruney like them ladies at your church.”
They are silent for a bit. Then Dotty mentions that the statue of a Confederate
soldier has disappeared from the town square. The night before, someone stole the
“hateful thing.” She says that everything is changing, and that Caroline should change
with it. Even the moon is changing, and appears to sing about change coming fast and
slow. Caroline believes nothing changes under water. The bus arrives and sings about
the assassination of President John F, Kennedy, which happened during the day. They
get on the bus and drive away
Inside the house, Rose talks with Noah; she asks him to think about Caroline, who
obviously hates working in the heat and shouldn’t have to find the money he carelessly
leaves in his pockets. Noah believes that Caroline likes putting his change in the bleach
cup for him, but Rose tells him that she must hate it—she’s poor! Noah refuses to
believe she is weak and unhappy; he runs back to his room. Rose follows him and tells
him about her plans for his pocket money; any money he leaves in his pockets will
belong to Caroline if she finds it. She says that change happens and he must adjust.
During this time, his grandparents arrive at the house and tell everyone that JFK has been
shot. Dotty and the Gellmans simultaneously mourn for the president and speculate about
the great things he might have done for their communities.
Later that night, Caroline sits on her porch, listening to a sad song on the radio.
Her daughter, Emmie, enters; her mother tells her that she shouldn’t break promises.
Emmie says she only lost track of the time; she was out having fun. Caroline tells her the
president has been killed. Emmie switches the radio station; she responds that she can’t
mourn for the man who sent her brother Larry off to Vietnam, and who did little for the
African American community. Caroline refuses to fight about the matter. She turns the
radio back to its original station. Emmie says goodnight to the world, kisses her mother
and goes inside the house.
Back at his house, Noah is in bed, wondering about Caroline. They start
conversing. Caroline tells him that she has plans to make her life less complicated. Noah
asks her to wish him goodnight, but she tells him that’s not her job. He wants to know
why she’s “so sad and angry all the time.” She says it isn’t his business; he counters that
he’s sad, too, and likes her all the same. Caroline advises him to go to sleep and “stop
botherin the night.” She doesn’t understand why she thinks about him when she has bills
to pay and a family to worry about; the night should belong to her.
The next day, Rose goes to the basement and talks to Caroline about her new
plan. Caroline is reluctant to take the boy’s money, but Rose insists that Noah is doing
this in response to his mother’s death; he hates hanging on to what’s valuable—he hates
the idea of change. Caroline suggests that she whup the boy, or just not give him any
money. Rose is embarrassed, but insists that Caroline take his money.
In Stuart’s practice room, Stuart counsels his son; he announces that he’ll be
giving Noah a dollar-fifty each week for his allowance, but he must help Rose around the
house more often. He suggests that Noah save his money to buy a chemistry set—
something Stuart always wanted when he was young. Noah’s head is spinning with all
the things he could buy.
Downstairs, Caroline is thinking about what she could do with the money Noah
leaves in his pockets. She admits that it’s tempting to watch the change add up over the
course of the week, but she still doesn’t intend to take it. Even so, she takes the change
from the bleach cup and puts it in her apron pocket.
Noah notices that she’s taken his money, and so he starts leaving more and more
money in his pockets for her. He enjoys the idea that her family might talk about him at
night. He leaves a dollar in his pants, but she calls him down into the basement and gives
it back to him. He asks if he can light her cigarette; she angrily rushes him out of the
basement. He leaves seventy-five cents for her. She takes it.
That night, Caroline gives her children (Emmie, Jackie and Joe) Noah’s money.
She goes inside their house without telling them why she has the extra change. The kids
sing a story about a woman who accidentally killed her child when he wanted to know
where her extra pocket change came from; in the middle of the song, they start dreaming
about what they can buy with their money. Meanwhile, Noah dreams that the
Thibodeaux family accepts him as a new member. The kids sing with the moon, and
Noah joins them. Back in the basement, Caroline rationalizes taking the boy’s change,
reminding herself that “thirty dollars ain’t enough.” The kids shout that they are free as
the air, and Caroline too says she is free.
As the second act begins, Caroline is listening to the radio in the basement. It is
near Christmas; the radio and washing machine are coaxing her to take more money from
the bleach cup. They remind her of how these new changes make her think of the past;
they remind her she married a Navy man in 1943. He served in World War II while she
took care of their new baby, and came home penniless and jobless; they had more
children. He drank heavily and abused Caroline. She prayed to God for help. One day,
she hit him back, and he disappeared.
Rose enters, carrying a dress shirt of Stuart’s. He left a quarter in his front pocket
and Caroline ironed its pattern into the shirt. She tells Caroline that she intends to apply
Noah’s rule to her husband as well. Caroline protests that she doesn’t want her husband’s
money. She explodes at Rose and bellows she won’t take any more of the Gellman
family’s money. Caroline goes back to ironing and the radio and washing machine warn
her she shouldn’t talk back to her boss like that. The dryer chimes in that everyone helps
themselves in their own way.
Rose tells Caroline that her father will be coming to visit for Chanukah; and asks
Caroline make up the guest room. Rose sings she was only trying to be friendly, though
in an aside she admits she thinks her maid too crabby for her own good. After trying to
make conversation about the burnt shirt, Rose leaves. The dryer tells Caroline that she’s
been brought to her knees by taking money. Suddenly, Emmie rises out of the laundry
basket nearby; she reminds Caroline of all the things her family needs. Caroline sings
about her husband during his World War II service, and she think about her son in
Vietnam now.
Later, Caroline, Emmie and Dotty are serving at the Gellmans’ Chanukah party.
The family is celebrating, but Noah escapes to the kitchen to be with Caroline and her
daughter. Rose follows him and scoots him out of the kitchen. Back in the living room,
her father, Mr. Stopnick, is pontificating about the Civil Rights movement and the change
it is bringing. Stuart’s parents are less than eager to talk about serious matters during a
party. They ask Stuart to play the clarinet and he does; everyone dances.
In the kitchen, Dotty tells Caroline and Emmie that they found the headless body
of the Confederate statue in the bayou. Everyone in town is agitated by the theft and
vandalism. Dotty is happy about the event, and Emmie tries to dismiss it as nothing
special. Dotty thinks that the authorities will stop at nothing to catch the people who did
it. Emmie mentions that the man who shot Kennedy was also assassinated, and on live
TV. Caroline shoos them back to their serving tasks. Emmie goes into the living room,
and Caroline tells Dotty she doesn’t want her daughter to hear about such grave things; it
could lead to problems.
In the living room, Mr. Stopnick continues to talk about how the workers will rise
up against their oppressors. Caroline and Dotty enter with their trays of food. Stopnick
continues in his speech, saying that force is necessary and that Martin Luther King, Jr.,
should realize that passivity can’t work in the United States. Emmie points out that
perhaps he doesn’t understand King’s plan. She wants to know how he came to learn so
much sitting safely up North. Caroline silences her after she and Mr. Stopnick get into a
heated argument. Humiliated, Emmie moves back to the kitchen.
Dotty and Caroline follow her. Dotty tries to reassure Caroline that Emmie was
doing fine, but Caroline is sure that if they spit in the white man’s face like that,
something bad will happen. Emmie explodes at her; she demands Caroline teach her how
to bow and scrape for things. Caroline slaps her daughter and leaves the house. Dotty
asks Emmie to stop sassing her mother; she ought to go and apologize. Emmie starts to
leave, but thinks better of it and stays to help Dotty clean the kitchen.
In the living room, Mr. Stopnick gives Noah a twenty dollar bill for his Chanukah
present, but not before trying to impart how valuable money is, especially when it comes
from someone else’s work. Stuart plays the clarinet while Noah stares at his gift. When
Rose speaks to him, he runs upstairs.
Outside, at the bus stop, Emmie tells Dotty about all the things she wants out of
life. Rose asks Stuart to check on Noah; he starts up the stairs but stops. He knows he
has grown apart from Noah, but he asks the boy never to forget his mother. Rose sees
him frozen on the staircase and laments that he does not love her the way he loved his
first wife. On the street, Emmie apologizes for calling her mother a maid.
The next day at the Gellman house, everyone is eating breakfast. Caroline comes
in and goes to the basement. Noah bemoans the fact that school bores him. Caroline
finds the twenty in Noah’s pants pocket. She stares at it, and then puts it in her pocket.
In school, Noah realizes that he left his present in his other pair of pants. When school
ends, he runs home and asks Caroline for his money. She refuses to give it to him. He
shouts that she isn’t being fair. Caroline retorts that she’s only following his mother’s
rule. Noah becomes hysterical and screams that he hates her; he tells her that President
Johnson has built a bomb to kill all African Americans. Caroline is silent for a moment.
Then she tells Noah that hell is like the basement only hotter, and that’s where Jewish
people like Noah go when they die. She gives Noah the twenty and she leaves the house.
After she leaves Noah puts the twenty dollar bill in the bleach cup.
Rose arrives home from shopping. Noah comes up from the basement and tells
her that Caroline left. Rose goes downstairs and turns off the dryer. She again asks Noah
what has happened. Noah runs past Mr. Stopnick, who has appeared with an armful of
groceries. In the basement, Noah discloses that Caroline doesn’t come back to the house
for days.
Rose finds Noah’s twenty dollars in the bleach cup. She goes to Stuart seeking
his help in dealing with Noah and Caroline. He evades conflict by suggesting that
Caroline is ill and that’s why she hasn’t come to work. Rose shows him the twenty.
Noah enters. His parents ask who the money belongs to; Mr. Stopnick appears and
claims the money. Still confused by Caroline’s absence, Rose calls Dotty for some
answers, but doesn’t like the tone the maid takes with her. Stuart retreats to practice his
clarinet. Mr. Stopnick tries to get his daughter to admit that she was trying to destroy
Noah’s feelings for Caroline. Rose counters that Noah still won’t let her near him. Mr.
Stopnick says he didn’t mean to upset her, kisses her and leaves. Rose swears she’s not
the boss, and that Caroline doesn’t know how to treat a friend.
On Sunday, Dotty meets Caroline on her front porch. Dotty tells her friend about
Mrs. Gellman’s call, but Caroline doesn’t want to deal with her. She tells Dotty she
needs to go to church and pray; she’s done some things during the week that she’s not
proud of; Dotty pleads with Caroline to try standing tall for her daughter. Caroline
refuses to quit her job; it’s too late for her to change. She’s going to keep all her
conversation for God; whenever she talks to other people, all that comes out is hate. All
she can do is hate. She orders Dotty out of her yard. Dotty leaves.
Alone, Caroline grieves for her lost opportunities and the life of service she’s
been tied to by the world. Her children come outside; she inspects them for church and
sends them off. Emmie gives her mother her hat, purse and gloves; before she leaves,
Caroline grabs her and hugs her tightly. Emmie leaves; Caroline puts on her hat and coat
and follows.
Later, Caroline stands on her porch in her maid’s uniform. She is listening to the
radio and smoking a cigarette. At the Gellman house, Noah is in bed. Rose stops by his
door, and he asks her why they have a basement, when there is only water in the ground.
She tells him to go to sleep. He calls her back (the first time he’s ever done so); he asks
if his mother was buried underwater. Rose replies that she’s in a mausoleum and can’t be
hurt by water. She kisses him goodnight; he listens to his father’s clarinet.
He wishes Caroline a goodnight. Caroline tells him to stop bothering the night.
He says that he’s glad she came back to work that day and apologizes for hiding. She
reassures him that someday he won’t; someday they’ll talk again. He asks if they’ll be
friends again. She replies that they never were friends.He wants to know what it’s like
underwater. She tells him that they’ll never talk about how sad both of them are; she
only reminds him that their mutual sorrow will never go away. “You learn how to lose
things,” she sings. You only miss them some of the time. “Like sharing a cigarette?” he
asks. “Yes,” she replies.
She puts out her cigarette. Emmie appears on the lawn in her nightgown.
Caroline looks at her and then goes inside. Emmie confesses that she and her friends
were the ones who stole the Confederate statue. She says that change is coming as a
result of her family. Her brothers tell her to be quiet, since their mother is asleep.
Emmie proudly declares that she is the daughter of a maid—a woman whose blood flows
underground and into the actions of her children.
About the Playwright
Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner intends his plays to be part of a greater
political movement; his work is concerned with moral
responsibility during politically repressive times. Kushner
has a way of bringing the lofty into the sphere of the
approachable by creating everyday characters who collide
both comically and tragically on stage. The gay, Jewish
socialist raised in Louisiana and educated at Columbia and NYU most enjoys addressing
audiences that are receptive to ideas for change and progress. In his speaking
engagements and lectures, Kushner talks about weighty philosophical and political
topics—without being didactic or patronizing. And because he genuinely respects the
intelligence of both his students and his audience, it’s truly rousing to hear Tony Kushner
speak about timeless matters such as faith, death, and life.
Tony Kushner’s seven-hour, two-part, Broadway production of Angels in
America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a masterful epic—it has received a
Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Evening Standard
Award, two Olivier Award Nominations, the New York Critics Circle Award, the Los
Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, and the LAMBDA Literary Award for Drama. In
1998, London’s National Theatre selected Angels in America as one of the ten best plays
of the 20th century. About Angels in America, Newsweek magazine wrote, “The entire
work is the broadest, deepest, most searching American play of our time.” The 2003
HBO television version of this play was directed by Mike Nichols and featured actors Al
Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson.
Tony Kushner’s other plays include Hydrotaphia, A Bright Room Called Day,
Slavs!: Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, and
adaptations of Goethe’s Stella, Brecht’s The Good Person of Setzuan, Ansky’s The
Dybbuk, and Corneille’s The Illusion. In addition, Kushner has received grants from the
New York State Council on the Arts, the NEA, the Whiting Foundation, and the
American Academy of Arts and Letters; he has also received a Lila Wallace/Reader’s
Digest Fellowship, and a medal for Cultural Achievement from the National Foundation
for Jewish Culture. Tony Kushner’s recent projects include the play Henry Box Brown or
the Mirror of Slavery; two musical plays, St. Cecilia or The Power of Music and Caroline
or Change; and the incredibly prescient Homebody/Kabul. Kushner wrote the screenplay
for the Mike Nichols film of "Angels in America" and Steven Spielberg’s “Munich”,
which was been nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Recent books
include Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak:
1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to
the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. He is also the subject of a
documentary film, “Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner,” made by the
Oscar-winning filmmaker Frieda Lee Mock. “Wrestling with Angels” will be shown at
the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
www.barclayagency.com/kushner.html
About the Composer
Jeanine Tesori
Jeanine Tesori (formerly known as Jeanine Levenson) is a
composer of musicals. She is perhaps best known for the Broadway
musical Thoroughly Modern Millie; she composed eleven new
songs for the show and added them to three from the movie
version; four previously written songs from the 1920s were also
added to the musical's score. She also composed the music for the
Broadway musical Caroline, or Change, with lyrics by Tony
Kushner. She contributed music to the 1998 Broadway production of William
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. She also composed an off-Broadway musical, Violet.
In 2006, she collaborated once again with Tony Kushner, composing new music
for his translation of Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, which was produced as
part of the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park season.
In addition to her work as a composer, Tesori has also served as an arranger,
conductor, and musician (usually a pianist). She wrote the dance arrangements and served
as associate conductor for the Broadway musical The Secret Garden. She also served as
associate conductor for The Who's Tommy on Broadway. Other Broadway arranging
credits include dance arrangements for How to Succeed in Business Without Really
Trying, Dream, and The Sound of Music (for which she also arranged incidental music);
vocal arrangements for Thoroughly Modern Millie; and arrangements for Swing!.
She is also working on songs for the new animated film from Walt Disney
Pictures entitled Rapunzel Unbraided, as well as a musical version of the DreamWorks
film Shrek.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanine_Tesori
Find an interview with Jeanine Tesori conducted by the Arden’s Associate Artistic
Director Amy Dugas Brown in your show program.
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT FROM
RECONSTRUCTION TO 1965:
A Brief History and Glossary of Movement Players and Places
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness.
Thomas Jefferson's stirring words, written in 1776 in our
Declaration of Independence, defined the promise of America-freedom and equality for all. The words rang hollow, however, for the
millions of African Americans held in slavery prior to the Civil War, and later denied
political, economic, educational, and social equality by unjust laws and social customs.
Throughout history, African Americans resisted their slavery and later secondclass citizenship. Opposition took many forms, from the passive resistance of slaves who
performed poor work for their masters, to slave revolts, to slaves escaping to freedom on
the Underground Railroad, to African Americans' participation in the Abolitionist
movement and their joining the Union army during the Civil War. During this trying
period African Americans preserved their heritage and social institutions.
Following the Civil War this country moved to extend equality to African
Americans with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution (1865) which
outlawed slavery, the 14th Amendment (1868) which made citizens of all persons born in
this country and afforded equal protection of the laws to all citizens, and the 15th
Amendment (1870) which provided the right to vote to all citizens, regardless of race (In
1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified giving women the right to vote). This promising
start soon faltered during the tensions of Reconstruction
(1865-1877) when federal armies occupied the South and
enforced order.
The genuine reform impulse of Reconstruction
was the "first" civil rights movement, as the victorious
North attempted to create the conditions whereby African
Americans could freely and fully participate in this
country as citizens. It was a noble experiment in bi-racial
harmony, and, had it succeeded, there probably would
have been no need for a "second" civil rights movement.
Exhausted by the efforts and divisions of the Civil
War and Reconstruction and the longing for the country
to reunite, the white advocates of equality were overcome
by the forces of reaction, and the fate of African
Americans was turned over to the individual states. Many states adopted restrictive laws
which enforced segregation of the races and the second-class status of African
Americans. The courts, the police, and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan all enforced
these discriminatory practices.
African Americans responded in a variety of
ways. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), the early 20th
century's leading advocate of black education, stressed
industrial schooling for African Americans and gradual
social adjustment rather than political and civil rights.
The charismatic reformer Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)
called for racial separatism and a "Back-to-Africa"
colonization program. But it was a different path, one that
emphasized that African Americans were in this country
to stay and would fight for their freedom and political
equality that led to the modern civil rights movement.
This modern movement has two main
characteristics. Although it had white supporters and sympathizers, the civil rights
movement was designed, led, organized, and manned by African Americans, who placed
themselves and their families on the front lines in the struggle for freedom. Their heroism
was brought home to every American through newspaper, and later, television reports as
their peaceful marches and demonstrations were violently attacked by law enforcement
officers armed with batons, bullwhips, fire hoses, police dogs, and mass arrests. The
second characteristic of the movement is that it was not monolithic, led by one or two
men. Rather it was a dispersed, grass-roots campaign that attacked segregation in many
different places using many different tactics.
The significant gains of the civil rights movement were won by people, not
processes. Against incredible odds--and often at great risk--the thousands of activists in
the modern freedom struggle won victories that touched their own lives as well as those
of their neighbors and future generations.
Resistance to racial equality in the Deep South came not only from extremist
groups like the Ku Klux Klan and white "citizens' councils." It occurred at all levels of
government and society--from federal judges to state governors to county sheriffs to local
citizens serving on juries. Governor Orvil Faubus of Arkansas used the Arkansas
National Guard to prevent school integration, and Governors Ross Barnett of Mississippi
and George Wallace of Alabama physically blocked school doorways. E.H. Hurst, a
Mississippi state representative, stalked and killed a black farmer for attending voter
registration classes. Laurie Pritchett, Albany, Georgia's police chief, thwarted student
efforts to integrate public places in the city.
Southern blacks who tried to register to vote--and those who supported them-were typically jeered and harassed, beaten or killed. In 1963, the NAACP's Medgar Evers
was gunned down in front of his wife and children in Jackson, Mississippi. Reverend
George Lee of Belzoni, Mississippi, was murdered when he refused to remove his name
from a list of registered voters, and farmer Herbert Lee of Liberty, Mississippi, was killed
for having attended voter education classes. Three "Freedom Summer" field-workers-Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman--were shot down for their part
in helping Mississippi blacks register and organize. Michael Schwerner, a social worker
from Manhattan's Lower East Side, James Chaney, a local plasterer's apprentice, and
Andrew Goodman, a Queens College anthropology student, disappeared in June 1964.
Their bodies were discovered several months later in an earthen dam outside
Philadelphia, Mississippi. Schwerner and Goodman had been shot once; Chaney, the lone
African American, had been savagely beaten and shot three times.
When violence failed to stop voter registration efforts, whites used economic
pressure. In Mississippi's LeFlore and Sunflower Counties--two of the poorest counties in
the nation--state authorities cut off federal food relief, resulting in a near-famine in the
region. Many black registrants throughout the South were also fired from their jobs or
refused credit at local banks and stores. In one town, a black grocer was forced out of
business when local whites stopped his store delivery trucks on the highway outside town
and made them turn around.
Like voter registrants, freedom riders
paid a heavy price for racial justice. When
the interracial groups of riders stepped off
Greyhound or Trailways buses in segregated
terminals, local police were usually absent.
Angry mobs were waiting, however, armed
with baseball bats, lead pipes, and bicycle
chains.
In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was
firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for
their lives. In Birmingham, where an FBI
informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor had encouraged the Ku
Klux Klan to attack an incoming group of freedom riders "until it looked like a bulldog
had got a hold of them," the riders were severely beaten. In eerily-quiet Montgomery, a
mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking John Lewis unconscious with a crate
and smashing Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen
men surrounded Jim Zwerg, a white student from Fisk University, and beat him in the
face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth. The freedom riders did not fare much better
in jail. There, they were crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In
Jackson, Mississippi, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100-degree
heat. Others were transferred to Parchman Penitentiary, where their food was deliberately
oversalted and their mattresses were removed. Sometimes the men were suspended by
"wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on
hot days, making it hard for them to breathe.
Out of jail, the freedom riders joined mass demonstrations where the violent
response of local police shocked the world. In Birmingham, police loosed attack dogs
into a peaceful crowd of demonstrators, and the German shepherds bit three teenagers. In
Birmingham and Orangeburg, South Carolina, firemen blasted protestors with hoses set
at a pressure to remove bark from trees and mortar from brick.
On "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama, police and troopers on horseback
charged into a group of marchers, beating them and firing tear gas. Several weeks later
the marchers trekked the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery without incident, but
afterwards four Klansmen murdered Detroit homemaker Viola Liuzzo as she drove
marchers back to Selma. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his life for the movement, struck
down by an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tennessee.
When white supremacists could not halt the civil rights movement, they tried to
demoralize its supporters. They bombed churches and other meeting places. They set
high bail and paced trials slowly, forcing civil rights organizations to spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars. At a Nashville lunch counter sit-in, the store manager locked the
door and turned on the insect fumigator. In St. Augustine, Florida, city officials who had
promised to meet with black demonstrators at City Hall offered them an empty table and
a tape recorder instead. In Selma, Sheriff Jim Clark and his deputies forced 165 students
into a three-mile run, poking them with cattle prods as they ran. Random violence
accompanied calculated acts. The Klan bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church killed four black girls. On the campus of the University of Mississippi, a
stray bullet struck a local jukebox-repairman in a riot that killed one reporter and
wounded more than 150 federal marshals. In Marion, Alabama, 26-year-old Jimmy Lee
Jackson was gunned down while trying to protect his mother and grandfather from State
Police. Not far away in Selma, a white Boston minister who had lost his way was clubbed
to death by white vigilantes.
The more violent southern whites became,
the more their actions were publicized and
denounced across the nation. Increasing violence
in the South's streets, jails, and public places
failed to break the spirits of the freedom fighters.
Indeed, it emboldened them.
The leadership role of black churches in
the movement was a natural extension of their
structure and function. They offered members an
opportunity to exercise roles denied them in
society. Throughout history, the black church
served not only as a place of worship but also as a
community "bulletin board," a credit union, a
"people's court" to solve disputes, a support
group, and a center of political activism. These
and other functions enhanced the importance of
the minister. The most prominent clergyman in the civil rights movement was Martin
Luther King, Jr. Time magazine's 1964 "Man of the Year" was a man of the people. He
joined as well as led protest demonstrations, and as comedian Dick Gregory put it, "he
gave as many fingerprints as autographs." King's powerful oratory and persistent call for
racial justice inspired sharecroppers and intellectuals alike. His tireless personal
commitment to and strong leadership role in the black freedom struggle won him
worldwide acclaim and the Nobel Peace Prize.
Students and seminarians in both the South and the North played key roles in
every phase of the civil rights movement--from bus boycotts to sit-ins to freedom rides to
social movements. The student movement involved such celebrated figures as John
Lewis, the single-minded activist who "kept on" despite many beatings and harassments;
Jim Lawson, the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; Diane Nash, an
articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; Bob Moses, pioneer of voting
registration in the most rural--and most dangerous--part of the South; and James Bevel, a
fiery preacher and charismatic organizer and facilitator. Other prominent student activists
included Charles McDew,
Bernard Lafayette, Charles
Jones, Lonnie King, Julian
Bond (associated with Atlanta
University), Hosea Williams
(associated with Brown
Chapel), and Stokely
Carmichael, who later changed
his name to Kwame Toure.
Church and student-led
movements developed their
own organizational and
sustaining structures. The
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (the SCLC), founded in 1957, coordinated and
raised funds, mostly from northern sources, for local protests and for the training of black
leaders. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, founded in 1957,
developed the "jail-no-bail" strategy. SNCC's role was to develop and link sit-in
campaigns and to help organize freedom rides, voter registration drives, and other protest
activities. Bob Moses of SNCC created the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO)
to coordinate the work of the SCLC, SNCC, and various other national and independent
civil rights groups. These three new groups often joined forces with existing
organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), founded in 1909, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), founded in 1942,
and the National Urban League. The NAACP and its Director, Roy Wilkins, provided
legal counsel for jailed demonstrators, helped raise bail, and continued to test segregation
and discrimination in the courts as it had been doing for half a century. CORE initiated
the 1961 Freedom Rides which involved many SNCC members, and CORE's leader
James Forman later became executive secretary of SNCC. The National Urban League,
founded in 1911 and headed by Whitney M. Young, Jr., helped open up job opportunities
for African Americans. Labor was represented by A. Philip Randolph, vice-president of
the American Federation of Labor, and his chief assistant and
organizer, Bayard Rustin.
All branches of the federal government impacted the
civil rights movement. President John Kennedy supported
enforcement of desegregation in schools and public facilities.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy brought more than 50
lawsuits in four states to secure black Americans' right to
vote. President Lyndon Johnson was personally committed to
achieving civil rights goals. Congress passed and President
Johnson signed the century's two most far-reaching pieces of
civil rights legislation--the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson advocated civil rights
even though he knew it would cost the Democratic Party the
South in the next presidential election, and for the foreseeable future. FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover, concerned about possible Communist influence in the civil rights
movement and personally antagonistic to Martin Luther King, Jr., used the FBI to
investigate King and other civil rights leaders. U.S. District Court Judge Frank M.
Johnson, Jr., ruled against segregation and voting rights discrimination in Alabama and
made the Selma-to-Montgomery March possible.
Information and images compiled from:
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nR/travel/civilrights/intro1.htm (2006.)
http://stockholm.usembassy.gov/usflag/images/dunlap.jpg
http://www.memory.loc.gov/.../immig/images/african9_3.jpg
http://www.img.timeinc.net/.../1964/1101640103_400.jpg
http://www.metascholar.org
http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/fi/000000db.jpg
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.bell/files/36-lyndon
Black and Jewish Relations in the US
In the year 2001, the tension between Blacks and
Jews remains a visible symbol of America's racial divide.
The history of this relationship is a tumultuous one,
ironically full of ugly twists and turns interspersed with
moments of real human transcendence.
Since the time of slavery, Blacks have in some
ways identified with the Jewish experience. They
compared their situation in the American South to that of
the Jews in Egypt, as expressed in Black spirituals such
as "Go Down, Moses." The longing for their own exodus
inspired the popularity of "Zion" in the names of many
Black churches. Black nationalists used the Zionist
movement as a model for their own Back-to-Africa
movement.
Over the years Jews have also expressed empathy
with the plight of Blacks. In the early 1900s, Jewish
newspapers drew parallels between the Black movement
out of the South and the Jews' escape from Egypt,
pointing out that both Blacks and Jews lived in ghettos,
and calling anti-Black riots in the South "pogroms".
Stressing the similarities rather than the differences
between the Jewish and Black experience in America,
Jewish leaders emphasized the idea that both groups
would benefit the more America moved toward a society
of merit, free of religious, ethnic and racial restrictions.
W.E.B. Dubois
Henry Malkewitz
From the beginning of the Civil Rights
Movement, Blacks and Jews marched arm-in-arm. In
1909, W.E.B. Dubois, Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald,
Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Stephen Wise and Henry
Malkewitz formed the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). One year
later other prominent Jewish and Black leaders created
the Urban League. Julius Rosenwald and Booker T.
Washington worked together in 1912 to improve the
educational system for Blacks in the South.
Thus, in the 1930s and '40s when Jewish refugee
professors arrived at Southern Black Colleges, there was
a history of overt empathy between Blacks and Jews, and
Ida B. Wells
the possibility of truly effective collaboration. Professor
Ernst Borinski organized dinners at which Blacks and Whites would have to sit next to
each other - a simple yet revolutionary act. Black students empathized with the cruelty
these scholars had endured in Europe and trusted them more than other Whites. In fact,
often Black students - as well as members of the Southern White community - saw these
refugees as "some kind of colored folk."
The unique relationship that developed between these teachers and their students
was in some ways a microcosm of what was beginning to happen in other parts of the
United States. The American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the
Anti-Defamation League were central to the campaign against racial prejudice. Jews
made substantial financial contributions to many civil rights organizations, including the
NAACP, the Urban League, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee. About 50 percent of the civil rights attorneys in the
South during the 1960s were Jews, as were over 50 percent of the Whites who went to
Mississippi in 1964 to challenge Jim Crow Laws.
With the late 1960s came the birth of the Black Power movement, emphasizing
self-determination, self-defense tactics and racial pride, and representing a radical break
from the nonviolence and racial integration espoused by the Reverend Martin Luther
King. The separatist rise of Black nationalism was just one of the difficulties facing the
Black-Jewish alliance since the end of the Civil Rights movement. The rapid decline of
American anti-Semitism since 1945, combined with the nation's continuing pervasive
racism, convinced Blacks there was an insurmountable racial gulf separating the two
groups. Blacks no longer perceived the division as one between the persecutors and their
victims - including Jews - but between those with white skin and those with black.
Through the eyes of Blacks, Jews became Whites with all the privileges their skin color
won them, regardless of alliances they had in the past.
As early as the first two decades after World War II, James Baldwin, Kenneth
Clark and other Blacks encouraged liberal Jews to give up the "special relationship." This
came in part from a fear that the Jews' determined belief in their bond with Blacks would
eventually become offensive and, paradoxically, provoke Black anti-Semitism. The
prospect of this shift was incomprehensible to Jews who believed that their own history,
culminating in the Holocaust, defined them as oppressed and thus incapable of being the
oppressor. And yet, as Baldwin pointed out in Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the
Jew, each time a Black person paid his Jewish landlord, shopped at a Jewish-owned store,
was taught by a Jewish school teacher, was supervised by a Jewish social worker, or was
paid by a Jewish employer, the fact of Black subservience to Jews was driven home.
Jews continued to call for the maintenance of a Black-Jewish alliance despite the
socioeconomic differences between the two groups. Positions hardened around such
divisive issues as affirmative action in the schools, Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic
rhetoric, the Crown Heights/Harlem riots and the Million Man March - all exacerbated by
the use of stereotypes in sensationalized media coverage.
In 1991, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, a car driven by an
Lubavitch Jew spun out of control onto a sidewalk, killing one Black child and injuring
another. As angry Black residents beat the car's driver, the privately run Jewish Hatzolah
ambulance arrived and workers began attending to the child pinned under the car. When a
New York city ambulance arrived, the technician instructed the Hatzolah driver to
remove the Lubavitch driver from the escalating scene and take him to the hospital. Black
onlookers were infuriated and rumors of the Jew being aided first flew through the
neighborhood. The streets filled with shouts of "Get the Jews!" and that night, a mob of
10 to 15 angry Black teens and men fatally stabbed a young Orthodox Holocaust
researcher. For three days Jewish residents of Crown Heights and reporters were beaten,
cars overturned and set afire, and stores looted and firebombed by angered Black
residents. Finally hundreds of police officers in riot gear restored a relative calm. The
state's official investigation into the riots found that city authorities and police failed to
respond appropriately. Lubavitchers say this was an experience few have forgotten.
That same year, an anonymous group of African Americans associated with the
Reverend Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam published The Secret Relationship between
Blacks and Jews, detailing the involvement of Jews in the Atlantic
slave trade and Pan-American slavery. Though Jewish historians
had already produced a significant body of scholarship on the
subject, the information had never appeared in a publication written
for a non-scholarly audience. The book caused quite a furor
because none of its data was placed in any context that would
indicate its broader historical significance. The role of Jews in the
enslavement of Blacks was exaggerated - not with misinformation
but through calculated misrepresentation.
Over the years Farrakhan has angered Jews, Catholics, gays, feminists and others
with various slurs, including his description of Judaism as a "gutter religion" and Jewish
landlords as "bloodsuckers." In 1995, Farrakhan spoke for over two hours to over
400,000 listeners at the Million Man March. Many believe that was more the result of a
desperate need for leadership than a widespread anti-Jewish feeling. "It's not about
Farrakhan," said one marcher. "[It's about] Black men uniting for a cause."
In Palm Beach, Florida after the November 2000 presidential election, the
Reverend Jesse Jackson asked that Jews and Blacks unite as they did in the Civil Rights
Era - this time to push for an accurate vote count in the presidential race.
American History has taught Blacks and Jews two very different lessons. In the
Jewish experience of the U.S., education and hard work eventually pay off and thus the
future is full of possibility. Blacks, however, face a legacy of three and a half centuries of
racism on American soil and the irrefutable sense that something more than dedication is
required. Currently there exist huge disparities between Jews and Blacks in terms of
crime, family breakdown, drug addiction, alcoholism and educational achievements. The
"culture of poverty" that exists in today's inner city is incomparable to anything in the
American Jewish experience.
http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/relations.html
Questions for Discussion
1) What is the relationship between the maid and her bosses in this story?
How does this mirror the role of African Americans in the south at the
time?
2) In what way are the other characters asking Caroline to change? What
does change mean to Caroline? To Emmie?
3) How is the Jewish family similar to the African American family in this
story?
4) What is Noah attitude towards Caroline? Towards Rose?
5) What part does money play in the plot of the play? How is money viewed
by each of the characters?
6) How does the assisination of President Kennedy change the tone of the
play?
7) Why do you think that Caroline, or Change is a musical rather than a
play?
8) Does Caroline, or Change end on a note of melancholy or hope? Why?