Exploring American history and culture through historical performances, drama, fine arts and dance

Monday, October 15, 2012 South Campus, Hofstra University

Expressions of

Democracy 2012

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Exploring American history and culture through historical performances, drama, fine arts and dance

Democracy in Performance – ten pivotal moments in American history are brought to life by scholar/performers and Hofstra student performers

Creative Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lisa Merrill

Creative Consultant and Director, The Bonus Army . . . . . . . . .Cindy Rosenthal

Creative Consultant and Performer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Dennis Anderson

Director, Café Society and Performer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melissa AdeyeyeCostume Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cheryl McCarronAssistant Costume Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Samantha Newby

Democracy Dance Project 2012 – a performance of dances by high school student choreographers, and Hofstra student and faculty choreographers, all inspired by social issues

Dance Event Coordinator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anita Feldman

Social Realism 2012 – a juried exhibit of art and photos submitted by middle and high school students depicting current American social issues

Exhibit Coordinator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Susan Goetz Zwirn

Assistant Exhibit Coordinator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cassandra Ceriano

Expressions of Democracy Producing Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cynthia Bogard

Cover Art by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kristine Jao…And Justice for All

Teacher: Beth AtkinsonHicksville High School

Expressions of

Democracy 2012

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Raquel Veliz Gonzales Soldier Children

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Expressions of Democracy The Visual Arts

Social Realism 2012 Art Exhibit and Contest

September 10-October 18, 2012

Middle and high school student artists in Nassau and Suffolk Counties convey what they consider the challenging issues facing the

United States today through the images they create .

Locations: Main Floor Lobby, Joan and Donald E . Axinn Library, South Campus First Floor and Lobby, Hagedorn Hall, South Campus

Gift certificates provided by Dick Blick Art Materials .

Coordinated by Susan Goetz Zwirn, director of art education, with the assistance of Cassandra Ceriano, art education graduate student .

Thanks to Susan Goetz Zwirn, Dory Rhodes and Julia Healy for serving as submission judges .

Art Exhibit Contest Winners:

First PlaceRaquel Veliz Gonzales

Soldier ChildrenTeacher: Barbara EvansRoosevelt High School

Second PlaceEricka Garcia

Legalization 4 All (Occupy Wall Street)

Teacher: Heather EvansEast Hampton High School

Third PlaceCynthia Lau

Street LifeTeacher: Beth AtkinsonHicksville High School

Honorable MentionAmanda PathmanathanUntitledTeacher: Regina NicholasFarmingdale High School

Honorable MentionMiguel SisonThe Dream ActTeacher: Paulette LoweSouth High School Valley Stream

Honorable MentionKristine Jao... And Justice for AllTeacher: Beth AtkinsonHicksville High School

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“The Spirit calls me and I must go.”– Sojourner Truth, 1843

Slave and Free: The Story of Sojourner Truth

Cast

Sojourner Truth . . . . . . . . . Annette Grevious, Claflin University

Claflin University Concert Choir, under direction of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Isaiah McGee

Choreographer . . . . . . . . . . Cedric Rembert, Claflin University

Dancers . . . . . . . . . .PULSE Dance Company, Claflin University

Sojourner Truth, advocate for human rights .

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Sojourner Truth was the self-given name of a woman – Isabella Baumfree – born into slavery in New York state in 1797. At the age of 9 she was ripped away from her slave parents and sold at auction to a man who beat her daily. After

two years, she was sold again and then again. Though the fourth man who owned “Belle” as she was then known, treated her with kindness, his wife often harassed her. When she was 18, Belle fell in love with a slave named Robert who lived on a neighboring farm. Robert’s owner, however, forbid their relationship because he didn’t want Robert to have children his neighbor would then own. So Robert was savagely beaten and Belle never saw him again. He eventually died from his injuries. Robert was the father of Belle’s oldest daughter, Diana. Belle was made to marry an older man and with him she had four more children, though one died shortly after birth. Although Belle’s owner had promised to free her, he changed his mind. So in 1826, a year before New York state ended slavery, Belle escaped to freedom, taking her newborn daughter, Sarah, with her. Her other children were legally obligated to work as bound servants into their 20s – even though slavery was ended. Belle stayed with a couple who paid her master for her services until slaves were emancipated a year later. She then found out that her 5-year-old son Peter had been illegally sold to a plantation in Alabama. With the help of the people she lived with, Belle brought legal proceedings against Peter’s new owner. The court found in her favor, and she became one of the first black women to go to court against a white man and win.

In 1843, after becoming a fervent Christian, Belle changed her name to Sojourner Truth and started traveling and preaching in favor of the abolition of slavery. She joined an organization dedicated to abolition, women’s rights, religious tolerance and pacifism and met some of its most famous members such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. She began dictating her memoirs to a friend, Olive Gilbert, and in 1850 Garrison published The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. That same year she spoke at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Worchester, Massachusetts. The next year she gave a speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron. This is the speech that later became known as her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. She continued speaking for abolition and for women’s rights, and during the Civil War helped to recruit black troops for the Union side and worked to improve conditions for African Americans, meeting President Lincoln in the process. After the Civil War emancipated slaves in the South, Truth advocated, though without success, that they be given land so they could earn their own living as farmers. She met with President Ulysses S. Grant, and in 1872 tried to vote for president but was turned away because she was a woman.

Over her long life, Truth advocated for the end of slavery, for women’s rights, for prison reform and for an end to capital punishment. She died in 1883 at the age of 86.

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Escaped Slaves’ Stories and the Fight for Abolition

Cast

Harriet Tubman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shakirah DeMesier

Reverend Henry Ward Beecher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philip Schaffer

Sally Maria Diggs, known as “Pinky,” a young slave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melissa Adeyeye

Henry Box Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lamar K . Cheston

Henry “Box” Brown emerges from the crate in which he mailed himself to freedom .

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In the early decades of the 19th century many Americans became abolitionists, activists and social reformers who advocated for the unconditional end of slavery. Among them were former slaves Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet

Tubman and Henry Box Brown. Journalist William Lloyd Garrison, a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, established and edited The Liberator, and Frederick Douglass established and edited the abolitionist newspaper North Star, both of which published accounts of the horrors of slavery. All of the aforementioned abolitionists gave public speeches and published articles and narratives that were crucial ingredients in building support for outlawing slavery among Northern white audiences. Often these narratives recounted the heroic and dangerous journey enslaved people endured to escape bondage. Abolitionists, many of them, like Tubman, former slaves themselves, also began to locate families sympathetic to ending slavery that would consent to offer their home as a “safe house” where those escaping slavery could hide on their journey north to freedom. The series of safe houses and other buildings such as churches became known as the “Underground Railroad” and the people, such as Tubman, who helped others get from safe house to safe house were known as “conductors.”

Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church was one such Underground Railroad site, as the Reverend, Henry Ward Beecher, was a committed abolitionist. In addition to Beecher’s abolitionist speeches and sermons, he brought actual enslaved young women, such as Sally Maria Diggs, to his pulpit. Beecher would tell congregants what horrific fate they would experience if sent back to slavery. Then the collection plate was passed so that churchgoers were encouraged to donate money to buy her from her owner so she could be freed. In this way, Beecher dramatically demonstrated what it meant to live in bondage.

America’s long history of enslaving people of African heritage came to an end during the Civil War with the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, 150 years ago.

“I had reasoned this out in my mind,

there was one of two things

I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one,

I would have the other.”

– Harriet Tubman

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The Promised Land: Immigration to America

Cast

Mary Antin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kate Carney

Statue of Liberty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reb Powers

Italian Immigrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mary St . Angelo

Irish Immigrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cyndi Robuck

Italian immigrants look toward the Statue of Liberty as their ship approaches “The Promised Land .”

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In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and make their way to the United States. Some, such as Italian and Irish immigrants, were fleeing crop failure and famine; others, such as Jews and Armenians, were

fleeing religious and political persecution, while still others faced shortages of land or jobs in their country of origin. Between 1870 and 1900, nearly 12 million immigrants came to the United States, primarily from Europe. About 70 percent of new immigrants first arrived in New York City, which became known as the “Golden Door.”

America was a land of economic opportunity for many impoverished immigrants as they found work in the factories of the Northeast or took up farming in the Midwest. Others treasured the relative political freedom they found in their new country. Many settled in the port cities where they had arrived, while some made their way inland to communities where previous immigrants from their home country had settled. Many immigrants suffered from discrimination. Employers paid them less than native-born workers, and many were stereotyped and ridiculed because they were “different.” Yet these new Americans gradually were integrated into their new chosen country, and their cultures, languages, cuisine, music and other cultural forms added richness and transformed American culture, thus demonstrating that diversity as well as unity can be a source of national pride.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

– Emma Lazarus

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Tales from the Great Depression

Cast

Eleanor Roosevelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suzan King

Letter Readers, in order of appearance . . . . Kimberly Lapidus

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Katarina Edwards

Frances Perkins – Secretary of Labor in FDR’s Administration . . . Katy Rebholz

Eleanor Roosevelt visiting a Work Progress Administration worksite, 1935 .

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The Great Depression was a worldwide severe economic downturn that is often said to have started with the U.S. stock market crash of October 29, 1929. After this event, the economy started to contract. Unemployment rose and

wages fell. The newly introduced credit systems that enabled citizens to purchase cars and homes led to an increasing number of Americans unable to pay their bills as they lost first their jobs, then their savings. Cars were repossessed and as people lost their mortgages, homelessness grew as people wandered from town to town looking for work or lived in informal shantytowns in makeshift shelters. By the time Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) started his term as president in the spring of 1932, numerous businesses had failed and there was such a severe banking crisis that most banks across the nation had shut their doors, fearing a panic, as depositors sought to withdraw their savings. The unemployment rate soared to almost 25 percent. President Roosevelt and Congress moved quickly in the first 100 days of his term to craft new policies that regulated and insured banks, propped up agricultural prices, encouraged laborers to organize unions, and distributed increased assistance to the poor and public employment to the unemployed, among other policies. Still, many struggled during the Great Depression, and many, especially children, wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt to ask for help or thank her and her husband for assistance. The president’s wife was a great humanitarian and advocate for the common person and a close presidential confidant and advisor. One program she helped to establish was the National Youth Administration, which paid students to stay in high school and college, thus helping their families and keeping them out of the labor force. Others, already out of school, were given public jobs in organizations such as the Civilian Conservation Corps. Eleanor Roosevelt insisted that the programs be open to women and all minorities. More than 4.5 million youths were assisted by the National Youth Administration during the Great Depression.

“I have moments of real terror when I think

we might be losing this generation.

We have got to bring these young people into the active life

of the community and make them feel that they are necessary.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt, New York Times, May 7, 1934

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A Century of Struggle: Votes for Women

Cast

Susan B . Anthony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sally Matson

Carrie Chapman Catt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dani Letsche

Lucy Stone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maggie Kissinger

Suffragists celebrate 1920 ratification of 19th Amendment .

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Some historians call the long period of activism for the right to vote for women in the United States “a century of struggle,” for indeed it took almost 100 years of advocacy by women and their supporters until the passage of the 19th

Amendment to the U.S. Constitution finally guaranteed women the right to vote in 1920. However, a few American women voted before 1920 in western states that allowed women’s suffrage in hopes of drawing more of them to settle in the West. Wyoming passed the first law in U.S. history in 1869 explicitly granting women the right to vote.

The early formal demand for women’s suffrage that is most widely known and celebrated took place during the first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. At the convention, delegates signed The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, a document outlining the need for women’s rights including the vote that was primarily authored by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who based the document on the Declaration of Independence. A subsequent and larger women’s rights convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850. It was after reading a speech organizer Lucy Stone had delivered at that event that Susan B. Anthony became devoted to the women’s suffrage movement. Anthony and Stanton became lifelong friends and women’s rights activists but died without seeing one of their most treasured goals – votes for women – become a national reality.

A new generation of activists took up the cause in the early 20th century. Anthony selected her younger friend, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, to succeed her as head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Meanwhile, two other young leaders, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, led a series of protests in front of the White House of President Woodrow Wilson, who ignored their protests for the first six months. The protesters unfurled banners stating that America is not a democracy because women lack the right to vote. Many were arrested and jailed, including Alice Paul, who was sentenced to seven months in jail in 1917. She began a hunger strike and was force fed by the authorities. During World War I, Wilson changed his mind and became a supporter of women’s right to vote as a war measure. Congress finally approved the 19th Amendment in 1919, and it was sent out to the states to ratify it. By 1920 sufficient states had approved it and women finally won the right to vote. After achieving woman’s suffrage, Carrie Chapman Catt went on to found the League for Women Voters in 1920.

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens;

nor yet we, the male citizens;

but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.”

– Susan B. Anthony

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The Bonus Army and the Great Depression

LongingA duet from Into Sunlight, an evening-length work inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss’ They Marched Into Sunlight . Choreographed by Robin Becker • Music by Andrea BauerDancers: Yoko Sugimoto-Ikezawa and Edwardo Brito

Members, Robin Becker Dance

The Bonus Army An original play by Isaac Rathbone • Directed by Cindy RosenthalMusical Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian PoakeVocal Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lily GoodmanStage Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rafella Rossi

CastNarrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Christian TitusPortland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steve SperaWashington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian PoakeIslamodora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Amanda MacAnacostia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lily Goodman

Out of work veterans traveling to Washington, D .C ., to ask for their bonus .

photo credit: Wisconsin Historical Society

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In the summer of 1932, some 43,000 marchers, including 17,000 veterans and their families and supporters, gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand that their government pay the bonus that the veterans of World War I had been promised.

In 1924 Congress had voted to give $500-$650 to each veteran as a “bonus” to compensate them for what they were not able to earn as workers during their time serving their country. Most of these were given as Certificates of Service and were not redeemable until 1945. But veterans demanded the government allow them to cash their war service bonus certificates immediately as, because of the Great Depression, many were jobless, homeless and hungry and needed funds desperately. Led by former army sergeant Walter W. Waters, veterans from around the nation marched to Washington. They massed in front of the Capitol Building on June 17, just as the Senate was defeating a bill that would have provided the bonuses immediately. The large group of protesters built an organized Hooverville, as these shantytowns were known, across the Anacostia River from Washington’s federal buildings and stayed put, waiting for President Hoover to come to their assistance. Instead, the attorney general, under direction from President Hoover, ordered the police to evict the veterans. When they tried to move back in, two police were cornered within the shantytown and the police fired on the protestors, killing two veterans. President Hoover then ordered the army, commanded by General Douglas MacArthur, to evict the protesters. Convinced that they were communists, MacArthur ignored the president’s order to stop at evicting the veterans and instead attacked them, using fixed bayonets and gas made of an arsenic compound that caused vomiting. One 3- month-old baby died of the gas, a woman miscarried, 55 veterans were injured and 135 were arrested. The attack on these unarmed veterans of World War I helped lead to Hoover’s resounding defeat in the 1932 presidential elections. The Bonus Army regrouped in 1933 and appealed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) for their bonus. Though Roosevelt opposed the bonus, he did allow the camp and provided it with three free meals a day. He also sent his wife, Eleanor, to visit the veterans, one of whom remarked, “Hoover sent the army, Roosevelt sent his wife.” Later, FDR used an executive order to provide 25,000 of these and other veterans with work in the newly formed Civilian Conservation Corps. Finally, in 1936, Congress voted to issue the $2 billion in bonuses immediately, overriding FDR’s veto to do so.

“We’re here for the duration and we’re not going to starve.

We’re going to keep ourselves a simon-pure veteran’s organization.

If the Bonus is paid it will relieve

to a large extent the deplorable economic condition.”

– Walter Waters, leader of the Bonus Army

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“We believe that the class struggle existing in society is expressed in the economic power of the master on the one side and

the growing economic power of the workers on the other side meeting in open battle now and again, but meeting in continual daily

conflict over which shall have the larger share of labor’s product and the ultimate ownership of the means of life.”

– Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Workers: Tragedy and TriumphThe Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

and the Bread and Roses Strike

CastElizabeth Gurley Flynn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Mary Anne TrasciattiRose Schneiderman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lulu LoloBill Haywood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gary NewmanClaire Lemlich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paige LockFrancis Perkins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Katy Rebholz

Immigrant garment workers marched to support workers’ rights after the Triangle Factory Fire .

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, March 25, 1911Thousands of immigrant workers toiled in the garment factories of early 20th-century New York City. Tragedy struck the industry on March 25, 1911, when a deadly fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of a building in Greenwich Village. There were no fire extinguishers. Terrified workers who ran to the fire escape dropped to their deaths when it collapsed. Others who rushed to a critical ninth floor exit discovered they were trapped behind a locked door. Heroic elevator operators risked their own lives to save others, making multiple trips to the burning floors until the cable snapped. As people on the street watched in horror, the workers began to jump out the windows. Fire trucks arrived, but their ladders only reached the sixth floor.

In the end 146 people, mostly young Italian and Jewish immigrant women, died. There was a trial, but the owners, long known for their anti-union activities, were declared “not guilty.” The fire became a rallying cry for the international labor movement, and inspired American women activists, including Rose Schneiderman of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, and Frances Perkins, first female Secretary of Labor in the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Many fire safety and workers’ rights laws, including requirements for fire extinguishers, alarms, maximum occupancy limits, better eating and toilet facilities, and limits on child labor, were enacted in response to this tragic event. These and other laws made New York one of the nation’s most progressive labor states, a legacy that still shapes working conditions 100 years later. With a quarter of its workforce belonging to unions, New York remains the most highly unionized labor force of any state – and one of the best paid.

The Bread and Roses Strike, Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1912Textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, walked off the job in January 1912, after a factory owner lowered wages in response to state legislation that reduced the work week for women and children from 56 to 54 hours. As it was, wages were so low that workers were barely surviving. Women were the backbone of the strike. Polish women immigrant workers were the first to leave their jobs; within the week the action spread to other factories in Lawrence, until more than 20,000 textile workers had joined. Organized by the Industrial Workers of the World, otherwise known as the Wobblies, the strike involved workers from more than a dozen ethnic groups and disproved the claim that immigrants were unorganizable. The strike popularized the slogan “Bread and Roses” – the idea that workers deserved dignity and improved working conditions, as well as higher wages. It also featured the development of the picket, in which sign-carrying strikers marched in circles in front of the factory doors – a technique still used by striking workers and other activists today. Workers demanded a 15 percent increase in pay, a 54-hour work week in accordance with the new Massachusetts law and immunity from firing for those who had participated. After coming to national attention, the eight-week strike was settled in March, with strikers getting most of what they had demanded, including a pay hike that granted the largest raise to the lowest paid workers. The Lawrence system led to pay hikes for more than 150,000 New England textile workers. But because they did not get a written contract, employers moved to whittle away most of the gains within the next few years.

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Civil Rights and the Founding of the NAACP

Cast

W .E .B . DuBois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charles Everett Pace

Ida B . Wells Barnett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oluwabukola Falodun

Elisabeth Freeman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mary St . Angelo

James Weldon Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Atkinson

An early meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People .

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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 in response to the intolerable problem of lynching of African Americans by white segregationists. Journalists, public speakers and

writers such as Ida B. Wells Barnett and Elisabeth Freeman covered these horrific events in the press in an attempt to inform audiences of the mob violence to which persons of color were routinely subjected. Beyond these terrible crimes, African Americans were also systematically barred from voting in Southern states through use of such measures as poll taxes, literacy tests and physical intimidation. The NAACP sought to ensure enforcement of the rights guaranteed by the Civil War era Amendments to the Constitution: the 13th Amendment (which ended slavery), the 14th Amendment (which promised equal protection under the law) and the 15th Amendment (which gave African American men the right to vote). Beyond these immediate goals, the organization sought political, educational, economic and social equality for all people and an end to race prejudice.

Though they were unsuccessful in persuading the U.S. Congress to enact anti-lynching legislation, lawyers of the NAACP won several voting rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the decision to declare the White Primary system unconstitutional.

Throughout the civil rights movement, the NAACP has played a crucial role and continues to act as a central advocate in the fight for equal rights for all.

Even the in the midst of mounting domestic terrorism against African Americans by white segregationists, elite members of the NAACP leadership (the root) built a rock-solid base of committed members (the branches). During the struggle for civil rights, the black church also played a central role in producing spiritual bounce-back, as the forces of mob rule sometimes deflated but never defeated a people’s struggle to be fully free. In his writing and speeches, civil rights activist and sociologist W.E.B. DuBois highlighted the role that resilience plays in a people’s struggle for democracy in a hostile environment.

“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”

– W.E.B. DuBois

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Ordinary PeopleChoreographer: Paul GiarratanoMusic: “Ordinary People” by John LegendThis dance focuses on everyday people moving about their day.Dancers: Natalie Affenita, Samantha Affenita, Dante Baldassin, Jordan Bryant,

Victoria Ferme, Kirsten Fetter, Emily Fitzgibbon, Antonia Franco, Cassie Greco, Erica Harms, Sarah Kennedy-Etheridge, Skylar Knox, Samantha Pizzichillo, Julianna Pulvidente, Daniela Roberto, Alycia Roselli, Julianna Sciacca, Marissa Terracciano, Alyssa Vero, Audry Zambrotta

School: St . John the Baptist High SchoolAdvisor: Renee Sussman

OstracizedChoreographer: Tina TiongsonMusic: “Miss Invisible” by Marie Digby This piece depicts the effects of bullying. Dancers: Carmen Capobianco, Keri Collins, Taylor Pineo, Maura Prisco, Najheri Salley School: Our Lady of Mercy Academy Advisor: Shelley Stoltz

Heavy in Your ArmsChoreographer: Reyna NunezMusic: “Heavy in Your Arms” by Florence and the MachineThis piece addresses domestic violence and abuse toward women. Dancer: Reyna Nunez School: Valley Stream Central High SchoolAdvisor: Kristin Martine

Pressure Choreographers: All of the dancersMusic: A mix, including “Rampage” by Skrillex, “Eyes on Fire” by Blue Foundation, and “Wide Awake” by Katy PerryThis piece explores the pressures of being a high school student.Dancers: Christina Cooke, Andy Dai, Damon Damaskos, Giovanni Spadaro,

Ariella VenturaSchool: Half Hollow Hills East High SchoolAdvisors: Thomas Ciolfi and Katrina Moise

BordersChoreographers: Brianna Calby, Jillian Zagorski, and the dancersMusic: “Violin Concerto II” by Philip Glass“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Dancers: Elizabeth Aiello, Jessica Barahona, Sean Breen, Karen Brenseke,

Sophia Briscoe, Kayla Collins, Brenda Givargidze, Rachel Guida, Johnathan Heller, Aren Kabarajian, Jennifer Lucarelli, Sabrina Odette, Atalia Collier-Parker, Pamela Pulvirenti, Victoria Rosa, KellyJane Watson

School: Walt Whitman High SchoolAdvisor: Susan Turner Radin

Democracy Dance Project 2012

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In PiecesChoreographer: Ty GraynorMusic: “Nothing Else Matters” by Apocalyptica This dance emphasizes the effect of homelessness on Americans today. Dancers: Joelle Abejar, Marisa Andrews, Lauren Bricca, Samantha Drexler,

Tamara Taylor, Shannon WilliamsSchool: Holy Trinity Diocesan High SchoolAdvisor: Catherine Murphy

LifeguardChoreographer: Hofstra Dance Major Hannah Cohen Music: “Promise” by Ben HowardLifeguard explores invisible and unacknowledged kindness.Dancers: Brianna Dixon and Martha LaveryDedicated to Sadie.

Immigrant Dance Forms That Have Changed the Shape of American Dance:An Exploration of Gumboot DanceChoreographer: Hofstra Dance Major Alexis RobbinsTraditional South African dance Dancers: Andre Goddard, Stephanie Grover, Holly King, Jana Lomax,

Elani Rodriguez

Step Dance SuiteChoreographer: Hofstra Faculty Member Darrah CarrMusic: Percival GraingerDancers: Eric Biss, Nicole Cacace, Maribeth Cacchioli, Margaret Carter,

Hannah Cohen, Tara Gilliard, Stephanie Grover, Alanna Kramer, Sarah Kulchinsky, Martha Lavery, Julia Macchio, Caitlin Sheppard, Annik Spencer, Priscilla Velazquez

Lamban for DemocracyChoreographer: Hofstra Faculty Member Dyane Harvey-Salaam Live music by Lydia Mata and Jordan ChiolisIn ancient times “Lamban” dances were performed only by the “Jalis,” the keepers of the history of the community. Now these dances are performed at rites of passage celebrations. Our country’s “democratic process” is a ritual when it is honored and allowed expression in its purest form. This is our prayer that these proceedings will continue honestly and truthfully.Dancers: Stephanie Caputo, Celeste Carrington, Irene Cosmadelis,

Kheeda Cruickshank, Camille Cruz, Gabrielle Emmanuel, Brooke Hahn, Savannah Holzwarth, Sofiat Oussein, Jasmine Phillips, Anjanette Ramcharran, Michelle Romano, Breshay Wigglesworth

Democracy Dance Project 2012 Coordinator: Anita Feldman

Dance Adjudicators of the high school choreography: Dance education majors Brooke Hahn, Keyla Hiraldo, Caitlin Rodriguez, Priscilla Velazquez and Elizabeth WehrmanAssistant: Brooke HahnRunning crew: Eric Biss, Alexandra Kuhlke, Gisselle Vazquez, Priscilla Velazquez

Special thanks to Rachel List, director of the Hofstra Dance Program.

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Child Labor in the Progressive Era

Cast

Alice Longworth Roosevelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dani Letsche

President Theodore Roosevelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Foote

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roberta Crisson

A scene from the 1903 children’s march organized and led by Mother Jones .

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Child labor, including slavery, indentured servitude, agricultural work, and low wage industrial work has existed in the United States throughout its history. During the early industrial era, for example, employers often preferred child

workers because they could be paid less and were viewed as more manageable and less likely to strike. By 1900 children were employed in large numbers in mines and factories, on farms, and as newsboys, messengers, boot polishers and peddlers. States had varied laws dealing with child laborers and in many places they were not enforced even if they existed.

During the early decades of the 20th century the number of child workers peaked and efforts to reform child labor laws grew also. As adult workers began to unionize for better working conditions and wages, child labor increasingly became an issue, in part because child workers undermined efforts to increase adult wages. Organizations such as the National Consumers’ League and the National Child Labor Committee formed, which fought for national legislation to prohibit most child labor. At the same time, these social activists fought for compulsory education laws for younger children. Social reformers such as the labor leader Mother Jones also emphasized the danger child workers experienced in mines, factories and on farms and child workers’ inability to gain an education as they spent their days working instead. In one early campaign in 1903, she marched with child textile mill workers from Pennsylvania to Oyster Bay, New York, President Theodore Roosevelt’s home, and garnered much publicity for the push to limit if not ban child labor. President Roosevelt supported laws limiting child labor, although he thought laws restricting child labor should be handled on a state-by-state basis, and was especially supportive of a child’s right to an education. But supporters in Congress were not able garner enough votes to pass meaningful federal limits on the practice. After several decades of struggle, the efforts of child labor policy reform activists both inside and outside the government produced the first federal law reforming child labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set a standard for the minimum age at which a child could work, limited working hours per week for children and forbade children from working during school hours.

“Someday the workers will take possession of your city hall,

and when we do,

no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit!”

– Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, 1903

Cast

President John F . Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Lowe

Poet Robert Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .John D . Anderson

Fanny Lou Hamer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Tiffany Sebastian

Freedom Summer Student . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeanine Russaw

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President John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Civil Rights

College students were trained as community organizers during Freedom Summer, 1964, an effort to register African American voters in Mississippi, a state where few African Americans had voted before .

“It ought to be possible, in short, for every American

to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard

to his race or his color.”

– John F. Kennedy, 1963

Photo courtesy of the Newseum.

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In June 1963, just months before he would be assassinated in Dallas, Texas, President John F. Kennedy delivered a national address, broadcast on both radio and television, to promote the cause of civil rights for all. In the speech, he advocated for equal

accommodation for all, in education and in places such as hotels and restaurants. Most important, he advocated for equal rights at the ballot box, coming out strongly against practices that limited African Americans’ rights to vote, especially in the segregated South. In the speech, he asked all citizens to treat one another as they would like to be treated, regardless of race, invoking the Golden Rule. He also vowed to enact legislation that would – through federal law – guarantee every American the right to vote in every state. “We have a right to expect,” he said, “that the law will be colorblind.” Although Kennedy was killed before his legislation was passed, his untimely death shook the nation and enabled his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, thus giving African Americans and all other racial minorities formal equal protection under the law.

Though Supreme Court rulings had already formally made equal accommodation in restaurants and transportation and desegregated schools the law of the land, that did not necessarily mean that the Southern states complied with the rulings. Young black activists, including John R. Lewis, who later became and remains a long-serving House of Representatives member from Georgia, decided to test the equal accommodations rulings by riding interstate buses across state lines into Southern states.

The Freedom Riders, as they were known, were often met with arrest for violating Jim Crow laws (even though the laws themselves were illegal due to the Supreme Court decisions). Additionally, the police often stood by and let pro-segregation white mobs attack the Freedom Riders and even cooperated with the white supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan in some locations. But through actions taken by the Freedom Riders and other activists who staged sit-ins across the South to integrate restaurants, desegregation eventually won the day. Recently, one of the white men who beat John Lewis approached him and asked for forgiveness, which Lewis granted him.

Freedom Summer took place in 1964 when thousands of African American Mississippi activists and about 1,000 young people from Northern states, most of them white and many Jewish, combined efforts to attempt to register African Americans to vote in Mississippi, a state where 93 percent of black voters had been denied the right to vote. Four civil rights groups combined to organize this effort, which was led by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Besides registering voters, Freedom Summer workers started Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses and community centers to aid impoverished rural African Americans in Mississippi. Many white residents of the state resented outsiders and black residents of their state who threatened to change their way of life. Some white supremacist groups took violent action. Homes and churches were bombed or burned, more than 1,000 were arrested, 80 Freedom Summer workers were beaten and three were killed – Mississippian James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York. Edgar Ray Killen, the ringleader of those who killed these 20-year-old students, was finally convicted in 2005, 41 years after the murders took place. Five others involved in the murders remain at large.

Despite the violence, many Freedom Summer workers remember their efforts as the defining moment of their lives and many went on to be actively involved citizens on a variety of civil rights issues.

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Café Society: Resistance to Jim Crow through Jazz and Poetry

of the Harlem Renaissance

Cast

Singers / Spoken Word Performers . . . . . . . . . . Melissa Adeyeye Lamar K . Cheston Shakirah DeMesierSpoken Word Performers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Felix Adeyeye Krista Collopy Alecia Detka Lamique FarrellBand MembersPiano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Dave LalamaDrums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ellis HolmesTrumpet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike CarubiaBass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jim CammackSax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jordan Cohen

Stage Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ashleigh Nixon-Joseph

Café Society was the first racially integrated jazz club in New York City . Here is Billie Holiday performing – perhaps

her famous song about lynching – “Strange Fruit .”

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A decade after the Civil War ended in 1865 and slaves were emancipated, the former confederate states of the South began to enact local and state laws that enforced segregation between blacks and whites. The laws passed in Southern

states supposedly provided “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites such as in restaurants, public toilets, public schools, and train and bus transportation. In reality, what was provided for black citizens was inferior to what whites received, thus creating systematic economic, political and social disadvantages for African Americans. African Americans were terrorized by lynching, wherein white segregationists would capture and publicly hang black men for supposed crimes, without any due process. These laws shaped the identity of African Americans on a national scale.

These series of local and state laws were often referred to as “Jim Crow,” after a character developed by a white New York actor, Thomas Rice. This term became widely known and used as a collective racial epithet for blacks. Although racial performances of this kind existed before Rice, his character popularized the stereotypical portrayals of blacks. Rice performed this character wearing “blackface” make-up – darkening his face using charcoal from a burnt cork to simulate the skin of his character. He performed this stereotyped “Negro” character, Jim Crow, in a mixed show with skits, singing and dancing called a minstrel show. These shows toured the United States and did much to promote negative stereotypes of black Americans to their white audiences.

Throughout the Jim Crow era, African Americans and others who supported racial justice and equality fought against these oppressive laws in a variety of ways, including trying to overturn the laws through the courts and legislation. But one important method was through communicating a message of struggle and freedom through poetry, literature and music.

During the 1920s and 1930s cultural, social and artistic expressions of African American freedom, racial justice, and equality centralized in Harlem, New York, in what came to be called the Harlem Renaissance. It could be said that the Harlem Renaissance marked a time for African Americans to solidify their identity within the United States.

Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Dubois were some of the writers who contributed to the literary portion of the movement. Other artists such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, to name a few, made great strides in the musical realm. Not only did literature and music from the Harlem Renaissance reinforce black identity, but it also functioned as a response of resistance to institutionalized degradation reinforced by minstrel performances.

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”

– Poet and amateur composer Abel Meeropol(a white, Jewish teacher from the Bronx who wrote under the name Allan Lewis) Made famous in Barney Josephson’s Café Society by jazz singer Billie Holiday.

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Sponsored by the Hofstra University Center for Civic Engagement, Hofstra Cultural Center, Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, Office of the President, School of Communication, Frank G . Zarb School of Business, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University®, Maurice A . Deane School of Law, Hofstra University Honors College, the Labor Studies Program, the Art Education Program, the Dance Education Program, and the Department of Drama and Dance .

Acknowledgments: Melissa Connolly, Athelene Collins, Cliff Jernigan, Neena Samuel, Martin Gonzalez, Sarah McCleskey, Dave Lalama, Peter Libman, Donna Levinson, Colin Sullivan, Alice Diaz-Bonhomme, Myra Kogan, James Hart, Alan Pittman, and the able technical crews of Hofstra University, including lighting design by Brian Canese and Adams Playhouse technical crew Brian Canese, Peter Hague and Brian Hetland . Thanks also to our student stage and technical staff: Codee Hutchins, Gianfranco Lentini, Ally Fairchild, Rachel Levi, Caitlyn Frisch, and Athena Ellis .

A special note of acknowledgment to our counterparts at Claflin University, South Carolina, for traveling to New York to perform our opening event on the life of Sojourner Truth.

PULSE Dance CompanyJasmine Denisha Frink, Shanae Elaine Neal, Imani Maleeda Turnage, Kiara Charmaine Ravenell, Keietta Carlease Mckune, Keziah Teisha Knights, Sheahan Vashti Smith, Merrell Lamar McDuffie, Jordan Tyler Kollock, Kristopher Monroe Scott, Ismail Khiry Noah Tolbert, William Edward Jeroy Burkins

Claflin University Concert Choir ShaLeia James, Bryttanye King, Tanzetter Williams, Brianna Johnson-Springs, BreAnna Walker, Alisha Friar, Jacqulyn Pleasant, Jordyn Fox, Phillip Ellis, Brandon Deville, Joshua Davis, Fernando Ramirez, Aaron Bradley, David Robinson, Keith Walls, Malcolm Brown, Pamela Nions, Corinthia Sims, Toia Gilliard, Lia Holman, Rod Hines, Desmond Williams, Andre Dawkins, Malcolm Lemons, Angel Bishop, Takiya Jackson, Cara Davis, Rebecca Daniel, Darshaya Oden, Betty-Alexandria Pride, Erica Baker, De’Tress Spellman, Dorian Dillard, Brandon Spencer, Christopher Denny, La’Quentin Jenkins, Akeem Robertson, Martin Dentley

Social Realism 2012 Art ExhibitLocation: Axinn Library and Hagedorn Hall

9:05-10 a .m . Slave and Free: The Story of Sojourner Truth

Location: Adams Playhouse

10:10- 11:05 a.m.

Escaped Slaves’ Stories and the Fight for Abolition

Location: TentSouth Adams Quad

A Century of Struggle: Votes for Women

Location: Small Tent Calkins Quad

Tales from the Great Depression

Location: TentNorth Adams Quad

The Promised Land: Immigration to America

Location: Large TentCalkins Quad

11:15 a.m.-12:40 p.m.

Democracy Dance Project 2012

Location: AdamsPlayhouse

The Bonus Army

Location: New Academic Building Theater (2nd floor)

Workers: Tragedy and Triumph: The Triangle Factory Fire & the Bread & Roses Strike

Location: TentNorth Adams Quad

Civil Rights and the Founding of the NAACP

Location: Large TentCalkins Quad

12:50- 1:45 p.m.

Café Society: Resistance to Jim Crow through Jazz and Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance

Location: Adams Playhouse

John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Civil Rights

Location: Small TentCalkins Quad

Child Labor in the Progressive Era

Location: TentNorth Adams Quad

2:55- 4:20 p.m.

The Bonus Army

Location: New Academic Building Theater (2nd floor)

Workers: Tragedy and Triumph: The Triangle Factory Fire & the Bread & Roses Strike

Location: TentNorth Adams Quad

Civil Rights and the Founding of the NAACP

Location: Large TentCalkins Quad

Expressions of Democracy 2012 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS • Monday, October 15, 2012