Seen this play before

Edgewood Elementary Spring Review

Richard Bryant played The Boy

With me in the role of The Father

Inspired casting in the months following

The March On Washington

For Jobs And Freedom

and

The 16^th Street Baptist Church

bombing in Birmingham

I remember Mr. Conti

Or was it Mrs. McKinney?

Directing us to remain silent for one full minute

Before speaking

Richard who lived

North of the plastics factory

In the colored section

Near Collis Harris and Richard Jenkins

Lacy Webb and Dennis Ross

Played the inquisitive child

To my detached adult

Asking questions like

“Why is the sky blue?” and “Which came first the chicken

Or the egg?”

My character

Puffing on a prop pipe

Hiding behind The Detroit Free Press

Had only to repeat the line

“I don’t know, son.”

I remember the audience laughing

When we delivered

The set up and the punch line

Perhaps the playwright either

Mrs. McKinney or Mr. Conti

Would have revised their script

Had they any inkling of the uprising

That would burn the city in three years or

Written new dialogue fifty years later

The grave father

Telling the wide eyed son

About survival in an age of enlightenment.