Ifa Bayeza Interview.pdf

"THESE CONVERSATIONS ARE LONG OVERDUE": An Interview with Ifa Bayeza Author(s): Ifa Bayeza and Corey D. B. Walker Source: Callaloo, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Summer, 2012), pp. 731-746 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23274335 Accessed: 13-02-2019 03:36 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

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"THESE CONVERSATIONS ARE LONG OVERDUE''

An InterviewIfa with Ifa Bayeza* Bayeza*

by Corey D. B. Walker

"Just as justice for Emmett Till is long overdue, these conversations

are long overdue."

—Ifa Bayeza

WALKER: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. I have so many questions for you it is hard to know where to begin. So, let's begin by discussing your motivation and vision behind The Ballad of Emmett Till. Specifically, what is it about Emmett Till that

continues to haunt you so? In what ways does your concern about the plight of young black men inform your artistic vision? How and why did you choose the form of the bal lad for your engagement with Till? Is your choice similar to your adoption of the form of the Greek tragedy in Homer G. & the Rhapsodies in the Fall of Detroit?1 BAYEZA: You just gave me a flurry of questions, all of which are really exciting. But let me start with the last one, which was your question about the connection of The Ballad of Emmett Till to my earlier piece Homer G. & the Rhapsodies in the Fall of Detroit. That's really where my journey with Emmett Till begins. Homer G & the Rhapsodies was an experimental theater piece that I started back in 1986 as a way to address the crisis I was witnessing with our young men, particularly boys on the threshold of manhood. I decided like, "Well, somebody needs to be addressing this. I know I'm not male, but as a writer, as a cultural worker, as a black activist, who is the descendant of black activists, I've got to do some thing." So I started working on Homer G & the Rhapsodies, transposing the fall of Troy to modern day Detroit. I was inspired by the Iliad and by a passage from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, where Malcolm X postulates that Homer might have been a black poet, a conquered, blinded African warrior.2 The ferocity in the Iliad, a story of warfare, bore such

strong similarities to what I was sensing on the streets of urban America. Then I read Black Athena, which also describes ancient warfare and casts it in terms of race, and I thought, "Ah, I can use this. I can use this whole imagining."3 As I was working on Homer G, one of my characters, a factory worker named Prime started hallucinating and thought someone was following him. It looked like this angel

* This interview was conducted on June 7, 12, and 13, 2012, in Churchill House in the Department of Af ricana Studies at Brown University, Providence, RI.

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to me, this avenging angel. I couldn't see its face, but it and man—and it only said two words: "Bear witness." I And it came to me that my character had been a witness

had not come forward. I said, "Oh shoot I've got to go b this." Just get some background—I thought! I thought, what did I know really? WALKER: —The face?

BAYEZA: I only knew the face. I knew there had been an incident and I think I knew about the whistle, but it had been a very long time since I even thought about Emmett Till. So I went to the Schomburg Center in New York and started researching, getting into what was then the extant information, primarily based on the William Bradford Huie Look magazine story and some Chicago Defender articles, but it was mostly Huie.4 While I grew increasingly intrigued by Emmett's story, the more I researched the more problematic the information became for me.

WALKER: You just said something, you said "Emmett's story." BAYEZA: Yes.

WALKER: In many ways, Emmett Till's story indexes a whole range of politic

ideological positions regarding race, politics, sex, violence, and justice in America, b became Emmett's story for you.

BAYEZA: It did, and a lot of things converged when I began the research. It brough my own childhood memories of the experience of first seeing the photograph of h from the funeral. My first encounter was a reprint of the Till story which Jet Ma used to do on the anniversary of his death. It might have been 1965,1 don't know e but it was where I first saw the image. I had not had the experience of seeing the v ability of youth and the concreteness of our mortality. While I had seen images of Rock and the images of the Sixteenth Street Church and the pristine photographs o four girls who were murdered, seeing Emmett's picture was the first time I under the real danger to black youth. The research took me back. WALKER: So it was more

BAYEZA: Yes, it took me back. I remembered seeing the beauty of his face and then t

horror of his death photograph and missing him. Feeling like I missed someone

though I didn't know him at all. His photograph was so alive, I missed him and wante know him. As I was reading through the material in the library, his absence became e more profound. The material was about his mother's journey, it was about his killer's called story, it was about Carolyn Bryant, it was about his death. It was about everyb but him, everything but his life. 732

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WALKER: You wanted to find that little boy.

BAYEZA: That peer. The research took me back to that I wanted to find out what that saga was for the child. I identifying how many of us felt as children, as child s ment. We were put into intense, emotionally battle-like pastors, and adult leaders believed it the right thing to think even they entertained the notion that that battle I was looking at Emmett's saga as a metaphor for the an of the Civil Right Movement carried without speaking, anxiety our children feel today, living under the constan

WALKER: That is so very interesting because when you Edward County in 1950 for instance, it was the childre

history of the new world African experience, it's al vulnerability of our children. That anxiety, indeed p ways in which communities have sought to protect the is this deep and profound sense about the fragility of o moment where Emmett unleashes this absolute vulnerab in a critical sense hushed ... Could it be this anxiety is r conscious because of the image of Till? I mean, just as t imagination, in the American imagination, the anxieties were at once local and very much known in many black in a way others had not because of that image.

BAYEZA: Absolutely. It was the unmasking of the terro That again for me comes back to the child's story. So m project wanted me to tell the story of Mamie Till-Mobl she was in the process of writing her memoir with Chr was trying to do. There's this communal refrain that E to demand that his coffin be open so that the world co What I found equally fascinating, though—and you're a to me on this—Emmett's body was never intended to su

the spirit that... WALKER: That brought it up .

BAYEZA: That brought it up ... on the third day. I look agency even beyond death as having bolstered Mamie Ti are of the same blood. This was the biggest national rac

across the world. The image of Emmett Till's mutilated

The image was critical, the actions of Mamie Till-Moble body not surfaced, we would not have this saga.

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WALKER: These stories are saturated with these theolog talk about the avenging angel in Homer G, and of course notions of sacrifice, of blood ...

BAYEZA: Right.

WALKER:... and questions of redemption, of healing BAYEZA: Right.

WALKER: But is it necessary? Is the theological a regist does it fix us into a construct whereby the shedding of the redemption of America?

BAYEZA: Is the shedding of black blood necessary f

played out that way? Well, yes. If you look at our journ

abduction on the continent through the Undergrou integrated protest movement in the world way before

have shed blood in pursuit of freedom and the "prom

central to the American story. Our struggle for liberat towards its promise. Emmett represents the unveiling that followed the Civil War: Jim Crow—a euphemism f death was a drop in the ocean, literally, but Emmett ro

the people were stirred into movement. He's symbol

that symbolic truth. The idealism that Emmett's death that many would say "redeemed" America. The thing th is that so many symbolic elements are already embed name for a patriarch? Or take the name, Emmett Till, in T's—that's the Trinity, that's Calvary. With "till" you've goes before to prepare the way. The Christian symbolis generations of African Americans, the references are ve

WALKER: Well, the theological does serve as a vehicle f

the deeper meaning of this event...

BAYEZA: Right! Within Mamie's name you have M Madonna, (as well as mammy and maimed) all reson

any more symbolically potent language than what alrea hands of history crafting for us a foundation myth of

WALKER: Let's talk a bit about your research process. Y pursuit of Emmett's story, but you were just finding e

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BAYEZA: Right.

WALKER: So how did you go about finding Emmett's st

BAYEZA: Well I moved to Chicago! I also sent a draf including Nena St. Lewis out of San Francisco,5 and E your department. Elmo said, "You have stuff here bu

was still holding onto my fictional story from Homer helped me to let that go. She sent me back the script wi interesting until page thirty when Emmett shows up." less. I threw it down and I didn't look at the manuscrip picked it up and turned to page thirty and Emmett's fi Panama straw/ With a green exotic feather/ Still say C sage to 'bear witness' was to me! I'm not supposed to be warfare; the real one is the point." From there, I just p and essentially had the beginning of The Ballad of Emme To be more factually-based, I needed to do some more Public Library's Vivian Harsh Collection and went into t material. This was before the digital universe. I began t ing of the story and its players and a more profound b of the documentation that was considered credible at th sentence in William Bradford Huie's article, where Huie

Emmett's friends, who said, "Yeah he had a white girlf her out. I was living on the Southside of Chicago and I Then I went and asked some folks who lived there, man temporaries in age and they would say, "Well now, you city, but back then it was an extremely segregated city. would this white child be?" Now, if Huie had said he ha spent his weekends and went to church, if there had be suggested that he understood Emmett's split life, I coul was a little more integrated, but with Huie saying, "I t Chicago ... you know, it's ... lying may be too strong. Su his article with descriptions of Carolyn Bryant's trial t difference between Carolyn Bryant saying, "He said thi me, etc.," and Mamie Till-Mobley saying her son stutter stutter. I asked myself, "If he stuttered that bad how co

impressions of Emmett were so far apart that I had to f

WALKER: Keep pressing.

BAYEZA: I went by his house and visited his school. I al he lived. I began keeping a geographic photo narrative,

he attended in Argo ...

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WALKER:... Argo Temple Church of God in Christ.

BAYEZA: Yes, thank you. In fact, his cousin Wheeler Pa Emmett's cousin and had been with him in Mississippi t When I introduced myself to Pastor Parker, he was so to some other Till activists, among them Alvin Sykes, Pr Campaign, who was lobbying to get the Till case reopene

of Emmett's cousins who had been with him in Mis

congregation. Elder Parker cautioned me that Simeon w me, but that he would be glad to. When I returned the n

conversation about Emmett and the seven last days

me to call him Wheeler. That was the first time I realize

who again were Emmett's peers, whose statements h

Weems from St. Louis had done some early research with scholar who defined Emmett Till as the watershed civil

WALKER: Well, yes, Clenora Hudson-Weems's disser

BAYEZA: Yes, but her work didn't break the surface, so mett's cousins had been out there but it hadn't broken t Simeon Wright agreed to an interview. He was a very e

beneath the surface. In a very soft spoken, quiet way still. He recoiled at the litany of stories and articles th of the Till case on fraudulent information. What I had more than affirmed. Between the two cousins, I learne

over those seven days and on that Wednesday at the st of Emmett that they shared so aided my construction of kind of stutter he had and the nature of the whistle. S

shy. He was a trickster, a prankster, and he loved jokes

Did anybody remember even one? No. I wound up ha

of humor out of the information that they gave me ab got a voice mail message from the Justice Department,

WALKER: What were you looking into?

BAYEZA: A couple of things: I was looking for the tran Louis Till's court martial transcript, and any records in

case, some of which could still be incendiary: obstructi some of whom are still held in very high regard in Miss

the Justice Department, a woman said, "This is the Civ came across my desk and I wanted to talk to you becaus WALKER: Anita Cochran?

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BAYEZA: Yes, it was Anita Cochran. She said, "I used to the time. He was in my sister's class, he was older than her, and she said, "Yes, that's why I'm calling you." The to be this beautiful statuesque redhead, very tall with f started telling me her memories of Emmett, she fell ri became that ten-year-old in the playground who clea used to tease my sister," she said, "My sister didn't like she put me in contact with her sister, Carole Adkins. T contact more of Emmett's classmates, and through them mett as a Chicago youth. I had gotten a picture of him a slightly different image started to emerge. I got a fou I spoke to Mr. Speeks, one of his teachers, who told me in speech class. Back when public school could support s speech class to correct his stutter. Another younger stud one of the techniques they learned to relax the facial m

their mouths." He described Emmett as his protector

me if anyone messes with you because of the way you t another indication of this emerging teenage spirit, com stand up for himself, wanting to be the protector, tryin this also reflected in his clothing, in his stance ...

WALKER: You see it in that famous picture, his style of BAYEZA: The tie ... WALKER: And the stance of his feet.

BAYEZA: He wasn't good at sports at all and he was a little roly-poly, and, of course, he had polio. I looked at the leg and wondered if beyond the speech, there was some other kind of physical challenge, a slight favoring of one leg that he would mask as his walk or his lean. I started to see this adolescent who hadn't quite revealed all of this to his mother yet. You know, that's what teenagers do, they try things outside, they test their indepen dence. Perhaps the image that Mamie Till-Mobley had of her son hadn't quite caught up

with who he was becoming.

WALKER: How he was experiencing his life, how he was growing.

BAYEZA: Right. WALKER: For a mother, he would always be a little boy.

BAYEZA: Right. The whole saga revolves around vestiges of manliness.

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WALKER: So in many ways, in your quest to tell Emme stories at once—a story of a youth going through adole coming a black man, and a story of a mother and son.

the backdrop of two disparate geographies—Chicago

differences of race and sex place certain demands on yo

adolescence in Mississippi during the seven days for because he was bigger than everyone else, he was ...

B AYEZA: Well, he was chubby, he was short, he wasn't else...

WALKER: But he was marked as a man ...

BAYEZA: Yes, but he was marked as a man after the incident because again, the South

didn't see black men. You could be a boy or an uncle, you could be a child or an old fellah, but you couldn't be a man.

WALKER: There's no development, no transition from boyhood into manhood ...

BAYEZA: His cousins had navigated this place and Mose Wright, Emmett's great uncle,

had been down there sixty-five years. There was a way that black men found to navigate and still keep dignity. All of them had extreme respect for Wright, their father and uncle and grandfather. They looked up to him. But simultaneously they were told, "You don't look at white folk, you look down or away." Emmett's whistle flew in the face of an en trenched Southern hierarchy. He had the audacity to think himself equal and capable of independent action, however foolish the action may have been, and the white South simply couldn't allow that to exist. Also, while Emmett's whistle was a provocative gesture, it was preceded by another. When he went to purchase his bubble gum, the white storekeeper Carolyn Bryant put her hand out, and he put the money in her hand. Everybody I inter viewed said, "You go in and you put the money on the counter, you don't... touch." So the first gesture breaking taboo was Carolyn Bryant's by her own admission. That touch, human to human, slight as it may have been, became a tornado. A combination of little moments escalated into a conflagration. WALKER: So you do all this, basically you go out and create a new archive because what you're finding is just not suitable. You are reading and rereading, visiting places, talking to

people. You have a new archive but that's still not enough for this story. It has to become The Ballad of Emmett Till.

BAYEZA: Well I had to find a mechanism. I chose to be a creative writer and not a scholar.

Although I do scholarly work, it is all in this drive to create drama, still my first love. I see

in my mind a canon of historical works that account for our time here in the same way that Shakespeare did historical plays of his time. The ancient Greek epics and plays were really grounding their culture in fundamental understandings of who they were, through 738

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telling the stories of their kingships and their wars. To is the sun king, one of our princes, and he battles the poetry in what I was learning, I thought the best way to to get as much of the facts straight as I could.

WALKER: So as you are getting the facts right, you are together. How does it come together as this ballad?

BAYEZA: Emmett's letter to Heluise and my interview w Emmett's first song, and the song became the key. WALKER: [Looking at a copy of the letter] Wow.

BAYEZA: He wrote the letter in May 1955, when he was much: the very fact that he would write the letter, that with an ink pen how many times did he actually write it

And homeboy put two tickets in the envelope, banki

This gave me another side to Emmett Louis Till. Not th

playing baseball and joking around. Not his mother's interested in trying to figure out how to impress a girl

in case the letter wasn't enough ...

WALKER: To get the tickets ...

BAYEZA: Oh, he has game! WALKER: Look at the penmanship; this is elegant.

BAYEZA: Yes! and playful.

WALKER: [Reading] "Remember M, remember E, put th write me sometime. Very sincerely, Bobo, real name Em

BAYEZA: Sounds like du-wop to me. From there, the

through the work. I wanted, through an a cappella songb

in the period and to suggest a romance, a modern folk Woods was two years older than Emmett, which I also f would come over and he would just sit and talk." She di her, but I could hear that in her voice. When I met her s

could tell once had been very long and her skin is just fl

It was so important for me to note that the object of Em

sexually—was an African woman, a brown-skinned girl. was key to both character and style. I started to hear his story as a ballad. 739

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WALKER: And it's a much more complicated story than at the beginning. From that image that haunted you th became something quite unique that it had to find its o

BAYEZA: Yes fortunately! "Miss Mamie and Bo," The Ba mett is preparing for his trip, didn't substantially chang from Homer G. As I started to incorporate the interview research into the chronicle of his trip south, I was tryin like these kinds of Adrienne Kennedy landscapes.) But I c "Just put your notes down in the seven days sequence, WALKER: A theological theme there.

BAYEZA: Yes, "Seven Days," that's it, the second movem sequence was the most powerful structure. It had a kind faster and faster. And that train image continued thro

the whistle, the engine picking up speed. When it got t just flew, it wrote itself.

One of the nice moments was when they went to the abduction, again information that's not really known wi ultimate rite of passage where the teenagers go to their comic catastrophe for Emmett. These tiny little things child's experience, become markers in his journey.

WALKER: You are painting a very detailed picture w series of stock dichotomies between the North and the

South with all of the sophistication and worldly kno

BAYEZA: You mean Campbell's more fictional version

WALKER: But he's coming to a world where he doesn't making all of these mistakes, but he's making them bec

BAYEZA: Exactly, which is how you grow up, you try t

WALKER: The way in which you talk about Emmett

written it in the many versions of The Ballad, seems to ered. Whereas you've learned all of this about the peopl things that you want to use to tell the story but you'r something else and as much as I have to tell the story, but I have to go with this form." Because of all these f continue to struggle with a sense of writing with Emme

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BAYEZA: Well, I had to make choices. For the trial,

fracturing. There was a line in Gwendolyn Brooks's piec "the decapitated exclamation points in that Other Wom WALKER: That's from . . .

BAYEZA: "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon." WALKER: Yes.

BAYEZA: And I said to myself behind that, the hysteria of Brooks's brilliantly dist image, there's got to be that still small voice that is just screaming because a mothe to describe how she found the body of her child, how she saw it. So I took an earlie ment of Mamie Till-Mobley's finding the body, of her making them open the coffin f first time, and put it in the present tense and then placed her courtroom testimony it so that you have her statement and then her interior rage, speaking simultaneou overlapping each other. And once I wrote that I didn't need the rest of the trial. One very percussive and direct, emotion being conveyed only through her eyes, and the voice, screaming a whisper.

WALKER: Some reviewers have had some difficulty with the torture scenes, this as of your work suggesting that you spend too much time in the torture scene.8

BAYEZA: Right and if you look at our literature and our popular culture and our po literature, white America loves violence. And they've got no problem with the villa if the villain is white and the victim is black—they can't absorb it. They don't have problem with Tony Soprano beating someone up, they don't have any problem with Godfather beating somebody up, but when the bad guy is the white man and the v is black, they cringe.

WALKER: When it's the unmasking of that terror, when they come face to face wi

BAYEZA: I'm not even laying it at their doorstep, I'm saying this happened. I'm not s you had something to do with it, but that guilt comes washing over them, nonethe and the first thing they want to do is push it away or decry my portrayal as too m wanted to indicate what torture is and to do it as aesthetically as I could, but not t

away from it. What I did not want to do was use the photograph because that woul jectify Emmett again. I was committed to taking audiences and readers on the journ his life, which ended during a night of prolonged torture. I wanted also to set that r straight, that he had to do battle with a gang, a mob. And I wanted to acknowledge

black culpability. I can't document to what extent Milam's "boys," as they were played a role. At the very least, we know they cleaned out the truck.

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WALKER: Ifa, we have talked a bit about the form of T one of the challenges for critics, to actually understand matter. Talk about the role and function of criticism t Ballad ofEmmett Till.

BAYEZA: Audience response has been consistent. It's conversation after readings or in the many talkback people come forth and begin, "I've never told anyon way clears the threshold for folks to bear witness to t trauma of experience or the trauma of witness, race an how touched us all. The work became a way to begin that conversations need to happen, that our nation con of enslavement and the brutal denial of African Ameri to your question about the criticism . .. The only thing your work will be seen. I think that has happened in th have been overwhelmingly positive, citing both the cal

At the O'Neill Theatre Center, the audience sat silent f

applause began and didn't stop. The Goodman Theatre with standing ovations every night. People stayed for t them the theater needed to close. I won the Edgar Allen At the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles, the show ra theatre award, the Ovations, the Garlands, Drama Criti

ton, coming home to the first production by an Africa production in the South, The Ballad ofEmmett Till had a the Ensemble Theatre. I'm a playwright of the people a me that I'm doing the correct thing. It is still an incen difficult. That's why I am so grateful for this Callaloo e

WALKER: You came to the Department of Africana Stu Till. How did coming to an academic setting help you in

BAYEZA: Well, when I attended the National Black Thea

Dartmouth College, I mentioned my work to Elmo Terr the Department of Africana Studies' Rites and Reason T said that this was an ideal project for Rites and Reason' is legendary given the number of artists who have com ate and develop new work. Sometime later, I became a f

of Mississippi, which supported much of my Mississipp

SonEdna Board Chair Karen Allen-Baxter also happe

Rites and Reason. I remained in conversation with Elmo fice of President Ruth Simmons, I was offered a comm

exploration of its historic involvement with enslaveme

the institution. As part of that initiative, Rites and Reas

artist-in-residence to explore a work related to this the

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The experience was tremendously invigorating and e

tion team—designers, dramaturg, director, actors—ther

table: Charlie Cobb and James Campbell.. .9 WALKER: And who's the third?

BAYEZA: Elmo! He served as dramaturg, but he is also an incredible scholar of theatre and African American cultural history. James Campbell and Charlie Cobb as you know are both premier scholars in civil rights history.

WALKER: But of course, with Charlie Cobb having a distinct perspective, quite different from James Campbell's. BAYEZA: Very different. Cobb is experienced in the field and also being a journalist writ ing for National Geographic he's very familiar with the relationship of geography to narra tive and both to oral history. He's done seminal projects on civil rights, and he brings his experiences from Emmett's generation and from the civil rights generation that inherited the mantle of Emmett Till. Professor Campbell, whom I had not met before, comes from an academic, studied observation of modem American racial and civil rights history. With one scholar being black and the other being white—which is also the racial dynamic of the story—the residency was an opportunity for me to subject the work not only to artistic scrutiny but to scholarly inquiry for veracity, authenticity, and the crystallization of what were my major themes. The conversation that we had was really rich and affirming. It was electric, controversial, visceral, and surprising. An African graduate student stood up and said, "You know, I didn't really understand African Americans, but this is giving me a window into your sensibility that I didn't have before."

WALKER: This could be something unique about the academic context. B AYEZA: Yes, I was really looking to strengthen the dialogue between the African cosmol ogy and black Christian liberation theology, with Emmett as a central figure, being both Christ-like and having attributes of some of the deific principles of the Yoruba orishas, Eshu and Shango. But the young African graduate student's comment told me that there was something uniquely American about Emmett.

WALKER: So you've gone through this entire experience here at Brown, which causes you to do some more work, some more research. Let's talk a bit more about what you've collected throughout the entire process. You have these books with all of your ideas and images and what was that like? BAYEZA: It's part of my process. I storyboard in my own particular way. Initially, I was just collecting the archival images because they were so much a part of this story: how the press captured the events, the national and the international coverage, the Southern and the Northern perceptions, the white and the black perceptions of the story, as well as myriad 743

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pictures of the major characters. I also collected images o in its apex and rhythm and blues, rock and roll were e teenager was becoming part of American culture. I env by this romantic period in African American culture, t ity. Du-wops were romance songs and romance songs ar and centered around love and mating. Images of black b the opulence of our prize fighters, our movie stars, an

WALKER: It's the beginning of sort of a mass media mo

BAYEZA: . . . with Jet magazine as the centerfold a

achievement. I was trying to see through Emmett's eye understanding of the world and himself.

WALKER: These images are so vitally important as prov John Edgar Wideman was writing an essay, "Looking at this statement: "a nightmare of being chased has plague The images of Till continue to haunt such that now Wi the father. Wideman now is working on a project on Lo continue to catalyze audiences. What is it about this?

BAYEZA: There are a lot of people who believe in everla want to affirm it in a work of art they're like, "Oh th superstitious, black person." But it is an underpinning African cosmology that the spirit survives. The more y they have to assist you, and Emmett's tale is one that w dition to that, there is a lot of apocryphal paranormal violent crime sometimes, in their confusion, have trou conversations with people, there was almost a refrain o alized Emmett was taken, almost went into a catatonic

over again, "I will see him again, I will see him again

weeks after, months after Emmett's death, she would s

he used to sit in her home. And there is ... my own cas as I told you, and this spiritual entity appeared ...

WALKER: Bearing witness...

BAYEZA:... and commanded that I bear witness, that we my nonfictional experience, there is a quality of haunt of Emmett Till. It is a recurring experience whether it with, or our nation's. For John, this was a recurring n and women who grew up in that time or the generation

cautionary tale and also as the tale to stiffen our resolv Over and over again, whether it was Cleve Sellers or Ju 744

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CALLALOO

nie Lou Harrier, Rosa Parks—all of these individuals, who breakthrough figures, describe a moment where Emmett— lay on their shoulders and made them move in a new dire that Jungian collective unconscious or whether it comes fr it comes from heaven, I don't make any judgment on that there is a palpable nature to his spirit. This is part of the ta story I'm telling. I'm looking at the boy hero, looking at hi agency was the power of the spirit after death, that his b denied its justice, and so—

WALKER: He continues to challenge us. BAYEZA: Yes, absolutely.

WALKER: Thank you.

NOTES

1. For a fuller exploration of the interrelationship between Greek tragedy and African American

including Bayeza's play, see Wetmore.

2. See Malcolm X 188. 3. See Bernal.

4. For a bibliography of primary sources of the Emmett Till case, see Metress. For a bibliography of Emmett Till in the literary and artistic imagination, see Pollack and Metress. 5. Nena St. Louis is a writer, singer, actor, teacher, performance artist, and sculptor based in San Fran cisco. She was the Robert Friersen Playwrighting Fellow at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco and a participating artist in the Artist Diversity Residency Program at the University of Nebraska. Ffer most recent work, JUMP, is a three-act autobiographical solo play exploring mental illness.

6. Elmo Terry-Morgan is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Theatre Arts and Performance Studies and Artistic Director of Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University. His major works include Miss Morning, the adaptation of The Legacy: Memories of the Gospel Song, The Washingtons: A Freedom Unknown, Song of Sheba, and Ophelia's Cotillion. He is currently under commission by the

National Black Theatre of Harlem to adapt the essays of its founder, Barbara Ann Teer, into a per

formance work.

7. The FBI reopened its investigation of the Emmett Till case in May of 2004. The "Prosecutive Report" along with a transcript of the original 1955 trial is available on the FBI's website at
fbi.gov/Emmett%20TiIl%20/>.

8. For an overview of the critical response to the play, see Rux. 9. Distinguished journalist and former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com mittee (SNCC) in Mississippi, Charles E. Cobb, Jr. is Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Brown. Until 2008, James T. Campbell was Professor of Africana Studies, American Studies, and History at Brown and chaired the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. 10. Qtd. in Gutkind.

WORKS CITED

Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. New Brunswick: Rut

Campbell, Bebe Moore. Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. New York: Putnam, 1992. Gutkind, Lee, ed. In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.

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Hudson, Clenora Frances. "Emmett Till: The Impetus for the M

of Iowa, 1988. Huie, William Bradford. "What's Happened to the Emmett Till K Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Hale

Metress, Christopher, ed. The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentar P, 2002.

Pollack, Harriet, and Christopher Metress, eds. Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2008.

Till-Mobley, Mamie, and Christopher Benson. Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America. New York: Random House, 2004. Wetmore, Kevin J. jr. Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy and African American Theatre. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2003. Wideman, John Edgar, "from The Louis Till Blues Project." Callaloo 34.1 (2011): 1-17.

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