The Justice

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of Company One Henry (Cliff Odle, left) and Jimmy (Jonathan Dent, center) work with Rutherford (Cedric Lilly) in 'The Good Negro.'

We all learned in elementary school about the heroics of participants in the Civil Rights movement. Marchers were attacked, activists were threatened and families were divided by the fight to end segregation. Company One's production of The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson communicates these heroics, but the true brilliance of the play lies in its confrontation of the manipulation and faults of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

The play opens in 1962 with the arrival of Reverends James Lawrence (played by recent Brown University graduate Jonathan Dent) and Henry Evans (Cliff Odle) in Birmingham, which is repeatedly described as the "most segregated city" in the United States. Joining them is American-by-way-of-Geneva Bill Rutherford (the properly earnest and indignant Cedric Lilly), who counters their stirring passion and ample experience in the South with his impeccable organizational skills and restrained, neat character. The Movement, as they call it, has the brains and the voice, but lacks the titular "Good Negro" cause to provide a rallying cry.

Enter Claudette Sullivan (Marvelyn McFarlane), mother of the four-year-old Shelly. Claudette is beaten and her daughter jailed when she violates segregation laws in order to allow her daughter to use a whites-only restroom, and instantly the three have found their cause. Countered by Claudette's stolid, uneducated husband Pelzie (James Milord, alternately tender and intimidating as the script demands), Jimmy, Henry and Rutherford pursue Claudette as the perfect front for the Movement.

But as questionable financial and moral practices come to light, and as two FBI agents on assignment to stop the Movement at all costs (enter the hilarious subplot in which the pair attempt to brand the black anti-segregationists as Communist pawns) with the help of KKK infiltrate Tommy Rowe (Greg Maraio), Claudette, Rutherford and the audience have their faith shaken. Wilson's play makes it eminently and poignantly clear that the nobility of the methods might not always match the nobility of the cause, and this point has us captivated as surely as the suspenseful plot.

Continued...

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