We can learn from our history or be bound to repeat it. In 1852, Frederick Douglass spoke powerfully about the cruel irony of a White college calling on him to commemorate the 4th of July while Blacks were enslaved or deprived of citizenship rights. But that was just the beginning of the story, as this excellent article in The Atlantic Monthly reveals. After emancipation, Black communities embraced the fourth of July as their own, with parades, cookouts and dance festivals throughout the South. Whites who had temporarily lost their positions of privilege with the end of the slave system chose to abandon the holiday rather than celebrate it with Blacks who had temporarily been given the vote and other civil rights during Reconstruction. By the late 1800s, White supremacists violently snuffed out the Black 4th of July celebrations that had come to symbolize Black freedom, ushering in the Jim Crow era in which Blacks were stripped of their citizenship rights for nearly a century.
There are too may obvious lessons for today to ignore this history and we urge you to read the Atlantic article if you wish to learn more.
We at Parsons Dance take this occasion to honor the generations of Black, Brown and White activists who fought for a world in which our company is possible. Seeing our performances is an occasion for everyone to embrace the humanity, vulnerability and excellence of a diverse group of dancers contributing the full range of their expression and celebrating the creativity that results. We thank the Black, Latinx, Asian and LGBTQ+ alumni of our company whose experiences of over four decades frame the space in which we dance every day. Yet we know that the police killings of Black people exemplify systems of oppression that are just outside the door. We know full well that the cultures of color that fuel artistic expression throughout the world emerged in the crucible of racial oppression. For these reasons we express our solidarity with those who have taken to the streets once again to declare that Black Lives Matter, and we state our allegiance to the cause of racial equity and ending White supremacy. We believe that in this time of reckoning real change is possible, and urge everyone to bring it about.
Jamie Martinez, Elizabeth Koeppen, and Mia McSwain performing in David Parsons’ Anthem (1998)
Photo Courtesy of Lois Greenfield