Cityscape

Cass Tech Grad's Play Revisits a Pioneering 1966 Detroit Protest & 'Freedom School'

May 13, 2018, 9:07 AM by  Alan Stamm

Some stories are so vivid, powerful and relevant that they cross decades without losing immediacy.

That's how dramatist Michael Dinwiddie, a Cass Tech graduate, sees what happened at Detroit's former Northern High School in April 1966, when a three-week walkout by 2,000 students inspired some of their teachers and changed the school near Woodward and Clairmount in the North End.

Dinwiddie, an associate professor at New York University and chairman of the nonprofit Duke Ellington Center for the Arts in Manhattan, depicts the 50-year-old protest in "Northern Lights 1966" -- a stage play with Motown music. Mosaic Youth Theatre presents it at the Detroit Instiutute of Arts, with three more public performances May 13, 19 and 20. (Details below.)

The show is promoted as "a powerful story that feels as current as today's headlines."

The school showdown a year before Detroit's 1967 riot "is the powerful true story of the students at Northern High who joined forces to demand educational equality and won," writes Branden Hunter of the Michigan Chronicle. He adds:

Students led by Judy Walker, Charles Colding and Michael Batchelor executed a three-week walkout that called for educational equality and the firing of white principal Art Carty, who was stuck in his old-school educational ways, and black police officer Barney Lucas, known for his police brutality around the school.

The revolt was supported by many of the engaged and active educators working within the system and together they formed a "Freedom School" in an effort to gain access to a better education and improve conditions for future generations of Detroit students.

That alternative to the public school being boycotted was the first "Freedom School" outside the South.


Mosaic Youth Theatre cast members

"One of our goals here is to tell the real-life story of young people in Detroit," director Rick Sperling tells Hunter.

"I came upon this story talking to retired professor Dr. Karl Gregory, who's still a very active member in the community. I was going to a conference with him and I asked him if he knew of any stories about Detroit’s young people and he told me the whole story of the Northern walkout and Freedom School.

"It was the most amazing story I had ever heard and from there, I knew that we wanted to do this story." . . .

Gregory, an alum of Northern, was a professor at Wayne State University and activist in Detroit in 1966. He, Northern teachers, area college professors, black lawyers, and others taught students at the Freedom School operated out of St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, at the invitation of Reverend David M. Gracie.

The school proved that students desired education over protesting and helped fuel their walkout.


Michael Dinwiddie (NYU photo)

Sperling founded Mosaic, a nonprofit, in 1992 after budget cuts forced most Detroit schools to eliminate arts programs. Local students are seeing "Northern Lights 1966" at  matinees last Friday and next Friday.

How to attend

  • Where: Detroit Film Theatre in the DIA
  • When: Sunday, May 13 at 4 p.m.), Saturday, May 19 at 7 p.m., Sunday, May 20 zt 4 p.m.
  • Cost: $12 youths (5-17), $22 seniors (65+), $27 adults, $37 priority seating (front center), $60 family (two adults, two children)  
  • Tickets: Available online for added fee ($1.59-$3.99)

Here's a 15-second clip of the play:

Featured_734_mosaic_30658


Read more:  Michigan Chronicle


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