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STAGE NOTES prepared by Bridget Grace Sheaff

The Mountaintop by

Glossary of people or events mentioned in The Mountaintop ...... 3 Glossary of People ...... 17 Specific Facts about Dr. Martin Luther Jr. (1929-1968) ...... 22 Events and Figures of the in the 1960’s ...... 25 Timeline leading up to April 4, 1968 ...... 29 Excerpts from MLK Speech, April 3, 1968 ...... 30 About the Play ...... 31 About the Playwright ...... 32

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Glossary of people or events mentioned in The Mountaintop Angela Davis: Davis emerged as a nationally prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. Apartheid: Apartheid was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP) governments, the ruling party from 1948 to 1994, under which the rights of the majority black inhabitants curtailed and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained. Apartheid was developed after World War II by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party and Broederbond organizations and was practiced also in South West Africa, which was admini- stered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate (revoked in 1966 via United Nations Resolution 2145), until it gained independence as Namibia in 1990. Assata Shakur: Shakur was an African-American activist and escaped convicted murderer who was a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and Black Liberation Army (BLA). Between 1971 and 1973, Shakur was accused of several crimes and made the subject of a multi-state manhunt. : Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non- violence, and gay rights. In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Rustin practiced . He was a leading activist of the early 1947–1955 civil-rights movement, helping to initiate a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge with civil disobedience racial segregation on inter- state busing. He recognized Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King's leadership; Rustin promoted the philosophy of nonviolence and the practices of nonviolent resistance, which he had observed while working with Gandhi's movement in India. Rustin became a leading strategist of the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1968. He was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was headed by A. Philip Randolph, the leading African-American labor-union president and socialist. BET: An American basic cable channel that targets African-American audiences. BET's programming began with a wide scope of comedy, music, public affairs and news programming including ComicView, with Donnie Simpson, , Softones, Screen Scene, Unreal//Caribbean Rhythms, Jam Zone/Cita's World; ; and BET News with Ed Gordon, Lead Story, BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley and BET Nightly News.

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Biggie: Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), best known as The Notorious B.I.G., Biggie or Biggie Smalls, was an American rapper. On March 9, 1997, in Los Angeles, Wallace was killed by an unknown assailant in a drive-by shooting. His double-disc set Life After Death, released 16 days later, rose to No. 1 on the U.S. album charts and was certified Diamond in 2000, one of the few hip hop albums to receive this certification. Wallace was noted for his "loose, easy flow", dark semi-autobiographical lyrics and storytelling abilities. Two more albums have been released since his death. He has certified sales of 17 million units in the United States. Bloods: The Bloods are a primarily, though not exclusively, African American street gang founded in Los Angeles, California. The gang is widely known for its rivalry with the Crips. They are identified by the red color worn by their members and by particular gang symbols, including distinctive hand signs. The Bloods are made up of various sub-groups known as "sets" between which significant differences exist such as colors, clothing, and operations, and political ideas that may be in open conflict with each other. Since their creation, the Blood gangs have branched out throughout the United States. Bob Marley: Marley was a Jamaican singer-songwriter who achieved international fame through a series of crossover reggae albums. Starting out in 1963 with the group the Wailers, he forged a distinc- tive songwriting and vocal style that would later resonate with audiences worldwide. The Wailers would go on to release some of the earliest reggae records with producer Lee Scratch Perry. After the Wailers disbanded in 1974, Marley pursued a solo career which culminated in the release of the album Exodus in 1977 which established his worldwide reputation. He was a committed Rastafarian who infused his music with a profound sense of spirituality. Clarence Thomas: Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court. Thomas grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and was educated at the College of the Holy Cross and at Yale Law School. In 1974, he was appointed an Assistant Attorney General in Missouri and subsequently practiced law there in the private sector. In 1979, he became a legislative assistant to Senator John Danforth (R-MO) and in 1981 was appointed Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In 1990, President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He served in that role for 16 months and on July 1, 1991, was nominated by Bush to fill Marshall's seat on the United States Supreme Court. Thomas's confirmation hearings were bitter and intensely fought, centering on an

Page | 4 accusation that he had made unwelcome sexual comments to attorney Anita Hill, a subordinate at the Department of Education and subsequently at the EEOC. The U.S. Senate ultimately confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52–48. Since joining the Court, Thomas has taken a textualist approach, seeking to uphold what he sees as the original meaning of the United States Constitution and statutes. He is generally viewed as the most conservative member of the Court. Thomas has often approached federalism issues in a way that limits the power of the federal government and expands power of state and local governments. At the same time, Thomas's opinions have generally supported a strong executive branch within the federal government. Colin Powell: Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under U.S. President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, the first African American to serve in that position. During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989), as Commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), holding the latter position during the Persian Gulf War. He was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was the first of two consecutive African American office-holders to hold the key Administration position of U.S. Secretary of State. Columbine High School: Columbine High School was the site of one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern United States history. It is the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history. The shootings occurred on April 20, 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students and a teacher, and wounded 23 others, before they both committed suicide. The massacre made headlines nationwide and around the world, making Columbine a household name, and causing a moral panic in American high schools. Condoleezza Rice: Rice served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush. Rice was the first female African- American secretary of state, as well as the second African American secretary of state (after Colin Powell), and the second female secretary of state (after Madeleine Albright). Rice was President Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position. Before joining the Bush administration, she was a professor of political science at Stanford University where she served as Provost from 1993 to 1999. Rice also served on the National Security Council as the Soviet and Eastern Europe Affairs Advisor to President George H.W. Bush during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification. The Cosby Show: The Cosby Show is an American television sitcom starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992. The show focuses on the Huxtable family, an upper middle-class African-American family living in Brooklyn, New York.

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According to TV Guide, the show "was TV's biggest hit in the 1980s, and almost single-handedly revived the sitcom genre and NBC's ratings fortunes". Entertainment Weekly stated that The Cosby Show helped to make possible a larger variety of shows with a predominantly African- American cast, from In Living Color to The Fresh of Bel-Air. Crips: The Crips are a primarily, but not exclusively, African-American gang. They were founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969 mainly by Raymond Washington and Williams. What was once a single alliance between two autonomous gangs is now a loosely connected network of individual sets, often engaged in open warfare with one another. The Crips are one of the largest and most violent associations of street gangs in the United States, with an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 members. The gang is known to be involved in murders, robberies, and drug dealing, among many other criminal pursuits. The gang is known for its gang members' use of the color blue in their clothing. However, this practice has waned due to police crackdowns on gang members. Crips are publicly known to have an intense and bitter rivalry with the Bloods. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on service by gays and lesbians in the military instituted by the Clinton Administration in February 28, 1994, when Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 issued on December 21, 1993, took effect, lasting until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. Drive-by: A drive-by shooting (or drive-by) is a form of hit-and-run tactic, a personal attack carried out by an individual or individuals from a moving vehicle, often without use of headlights to avoid being noticed. It often results in bystanders being shot instead of, or as well as, the intended target. The objective is to overwhelm the target by a sudden, massive amount of firepower without attention to accuracy. Two of the most famous drive-by shootings were the murders of rappers on September 7, 1996 (although Tupac died six days later on September 13, 1996), and The Notorious B.I.G. on March 9, 1997. Isaac Hayes: Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. Hayes, Porter, Bill Withers, the Sherman Brothers, Steve Cropper, and John Fogerty were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of writing scores of notable songs for themselves, the duo Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, and others. The hit song "Soul Man", written by Hayes and Porter and first performed by Sam & Dave, has been recognized as one of the most influential songs of the past 50 years by the Grammy

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Hall of Fame. It was also honored by The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, by Rolling Stone Magazine, and by the RIAA as one of the Songs of the Century. : One of the founding fathers of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century popular music and dance, he is often referred to as "The Godfather of Soul". In a career that spanned six decades, Brown profoundly influenced the development of many different musical genres. James Byrd: Byrd was an African-American who was murdered by three men, of whom at least two were white supremacists, in Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and John King dragged Byrd for three miles behind a pick-up truck along an asphalt road. Byrd, who remained conscious throughout most of the ordeal, was killed when his body hit the edge of a culvert, severing his right arm and head. The murderers drove on for another mile before dumping his torso in front of an African-American cemetery in Jasper. Byrd's lynching-by- dragging gave impetus to passage of a Texas hate crimes law. It later led to the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, commonly known as the Matthew Shepard Act, which passed on October 22, 2009, and which President Barack Obama signed into law on October 28, 2009. The Jeffersons: The Jeffersons is an American sitcom that was broadcast on CBS from January 18, 1975, through July 2, 1985, lasting 11 seasons and a total of 253 episodes. The show was produced by the T.A.T. Communications Company from 1975–1982 and by Embassy Television from 1982–1985. The Jeffersons is one of the longest-running sitcoms in the history of American television. The show focuses on George and Louise Jefferson, an affluent African-American couple living in New York City. The show was launched as the second spin-off of All In The Family, on which the Jeffersons had been the neighbors of Archie and Edith Bunker. The show was the creation of prolific television producer Norman Lear. However, it was less sharply political in tone than some of his shows. The Jeffersons evolved into more of a traditional sitcom, relying more on the characters' interactions with one another than on explicitly political dialogue or storylines. It did, however, tackle a few controversial topics, including racism, suicide, gun control and adult illiteracy. Also, the words "nigger" and "honky" were used occasionally, especially during the earlier seasons. Julian Bond: Horace Julian Bond is an American social activist and leader in the American civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in , Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped to establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Bond was elected to four terms in the Georgia House of Representatives and later to six terms in the Georgia Senate, having served a combined twenty years in both legislative chambers. From 1998 to 2010, he

Page | 7 was chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Marion Barry: Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr. is an American politician who served as the second elected Mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991, and again as the fourth Mayor from 1995 to 1999. He has been a member of the Council of the District of Columbia, representing Washington, D.C.'s Ward 8, since 2005. A Democrat, Barry previously served two other tenures on the DC Council, as an at-large member from 1975 to 1979 and as Ward 8 representative from 1993 to 1995. In the 1960s, he was involved in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, serving as the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Barry came to national prominence as mayor of the national capital, the first prominent civil-rights activist to become chief executive of a major American city; he gave the presidential nomination speech for at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. His celebrity transformed into international notoriety in January 1990, when Barry was videotaped smoking crack cocaine and arrested by FBI officials on drug charges. The arrest and subsequent trial precluded Barry seeking re-election, and Barry served six months in a federal prison. After his release, however, he was elected to the DC city council in 1992 and ultimately returned to the mayoralty in 1994, serving from 1995 to 1999. Despite his history of political and legal controversies, Barry remains a popular and influential figure in the local political scene of Washington, D.C. The alternative weekly Washington City Paper nicknamed him "Mayor for life," a designation that remained long after Barry left the mayoralty. The Washington Post has stated that "to understand the District of Columbia, one must understand Marion Barry." McDonalds: McDonald’s is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries. McDonald's trains more women and minorities than any other employer. In fact, women and minorities represent more than 50 percent of McDonald's current workforce. Half of McDonald's restaurant management workforce is comprised of women and minorities. Montelle: Montel Brian Anthony Williams (born July 3, 1956) is an American television personality, radio talk show host and actor. He is best known as host of the long-running The Montel Williams Show. In its early years, Montel was similar to most tabloid talk shows. As time went on, however, the genre became less popular, and so toward the end of the show's run, Montel usually focused on inspirational stories and less controversial subjects. themes seen on Montel include finding lost loves, reuniting mothers who gave their children up for adoption, or stories of strong women who faced certain danger (such as rape or murder) and fought their way out. Multiple sclerosis was also a frequent topic, as Williams suffers from the disease.

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MTV: During MTV's first few years on the air, very few black artists were included in rotation on the channel. The select few who were in MTV's rotation were Prince, Eddy Grant, Donna Summer, Musical Youth, and Herbie Hancock. The very first non-white act played on MTV was the British band The Specials, which featured an integrated line-up of white and black musicians and vocalists. The Specials' video "Rat Race" was played as the 58th video on the station's first day of broadcasting. MTV rejected other black artists' videos, such as Rick James' "Super Freak", because they didn't fit the channel's carefully selected AOR format at the time. The exclusion enraged James; he publicly advocated the addition of more black artists' videos on the channel. Rock legend also questioned MTV's “lack of negro artists” during an on-air interview with VJ Mark Goodman in 1983. MTV's original head of talent and acquisition, Carolyn B. Baker, who was black, had questioned why the definition of music had to be so narrow, as had a few others outside the network. "The party line at MTV was that we weren't playing black music because of the "research"," said Baker years later. "But the research was based on ignorance... we were young, we were cutting edge. We didn't have to be on the cutting edge of racism." Nevertheless, it was Baker who had personally rejected Rick James' video for “Super Freak” "because there were half-naked women in it, and it was a piece of crap. As a black woman, I did not want that representing my people as the first black video on MTV." The network's director of music programming Buzz Brindle told an interviewer in 2006, “MTV was originally designed to be a rock music channel. It was difficult for MTV to find African American artists whose music fit the channel’s format that leaned toward rock at the outset.” Writers Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum noted that the channel "aired videos by plenty of white artists who didn't play rock." Andrew Goodwin later wrote, "[MTV] denied racism, on the grounds that it merely followed the rules of the rock business (which were, nonetheless, the consequence of a long history of racism)." MTV senior executive vice president Les Garland complained decades later, "The worst thing was that ‘racism’ bullshit... there were hardly any videos being made by black artists. Record companies weren't funding them. They never got charged with racism." Before 1983, Michael Jackson also struggled to receive airtime on MTV. To resolve the struggle and finally "break the color barrier," the president of CBS Records at the time, Walter Yetnikoff, denounced MTV in a strong, profane statement, threatening to take away MTV's ability to play any of the record label's music videos. However, Les Garland, then acquisitions head, said he decided to air Jackson's "Billie Jean" video without pressure from CBS. This was contradicted by CBS head of Business Affairs David Benjamin in Vanity Fair. According to The Austin Chronicle, Jackson's video for the song "Billie Jean" was "the video that broke the color barrier, even though the channel itself was responsible for erecting that barrier in the first place." But change was not immediate. "Billie Jean" was not added to MTV's "medium rotation" playlist (two to three airings per day) until after it had already reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. A month later, it was bumped up into "heavy rotation," one week before the MTV debut of Jackson's "Beat It" video. Both videos were played several times a day

Page | 9 for the next two months; by early summer, the channel had ceased playing either song. But the impact was permanent as by that point the videos by other black artists such as "Little Red Corvette" and "1999" by Prince and "She Works Hard For The Money" by Donna Summer were in healthy rotation on the channel. When Jackson's elaborate video for "Thriller" was released late in the year, the network's support for it was total, leading to a lengthy partnership with Jackson that helped other black music artists, including Prince, , and Jackson's younger sister . Jonathan Cohen of Billboard Magazine observed that Janet Jackson's "accessible sound and spectacularly choreographed videos were irresistible to MTV, and helped the channel evolve from rock programming to a broader, beat-driven musical mix." Eventually, videos from the emerging genre of rap and hip hop would also begin to enter rotation on MTV. A majority of the rap artists appearing on MTV in the mid-1980s, such as Run-DMC, The Fat Boys, Whodini, L.L. Cool J and the Beastie Boys, were from the East Coast. Video director Don Letts has a different view of the timeline, saying, "People often say "Billie Jean" was the first black on MTV. "Pass the Dutchie" was first. Because they were little and spoke in funny British accents, Musical Youth were deemed as non-threatening, and therefore non-black." NBA: The composition of race and ethnicity in the National Basketball Association (NBA) has changed throughout the league's history. The first non-white player entered the league in 1947. According to racial equality activist Richard Lapchick, the NBA in 2011 was composed of 78 percent black players, 17 percent whites, four percent Latinos, and one percent Asian. The league had by far the highest percentage of black players of any major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. Oprah: Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her multi-award-winning talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she has been ranked the richest African- American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and is currently North America's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and an honorary doctorate degree from Harvard. Her television show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, was highly influential, and many of its topics penetrated into the American pop-cultural consciousness. Winfrey used the show as a platform to teach and inspire, providing viewers with a positive, spiritually uplifting experience by featuring book clubs, compelling interviews, self-improvement segments, and philanthropic forays into world events.

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Osama: Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, the Sunni militant Islamist organization that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. Redemption Songs: "Redemption Song" is a song by Bob Marley. It is the final track on Bob Marley & the Wailers' ninth album, Uprising, produced by Chris Blackwell and released by Island Records. The song is considered one of Marley's greatest works. Some key lyrics derived from a speech given by the Pan-Africanist orator Marcus Garvey. At the time he wrote the song, circa 1979, Bob Marley had been diagnosed with the cancer in his toe that later was to take his life. According to Rita Marley, "he was already secretly in a lot of pain and dealt with his own mortality, a feature that is clearly apparent in the album, particularly in this song". Unlike most of Bob Marley's tracks, it is strictly a solo acoustic recording, consisting of Marley singing and playing an acoustic guitar, without accompaniment. Ron Brown: Ronald Harmon "Ron" Brown was the United States Secretary of Commerce, serving during the first term of President Bill Clinton. He was the first African American to hold this position. He was killed, along with 34 others, in a 1996 plane crash in Croatia. In May 1988, Brown was named by Jesse L. Jackson to head Jackson's convention team at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Brown was named along with several other experienced party insiders to Jackson's convention operation. By June, it was apparent that Brown was also running Jackson's campaign. Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee on February 10, 1989, and played an integral role in running a successful 1992 Democratic National Convention and in Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential run. President Clinton then appointed Brown to the position of Secretary of Commerce in 1993. The Roots: The Roots are an American Grammy Award-winning hip hop/neo soul band, formed in 1987 by Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The Roots are known for a jazzy and eclectic approach to hip-hop featuring live musical instruments. Malik B., Leonard "Hub", and Josh Abrams were added to the band (formerly named "The Square Roots"). Since its first independent album-length release the band has released 10 studio albums, two EPs, two "collaboration" albums (with other artists), and collaborated on recordings and in live shows with a wide variety of artists in many musical genres. The Roots served as the house band on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon from 2009 to 2014, and in the same role (and accompanying show guest artists) on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since 2014. The Roots' work has been consistently met with critical acclaim. About.com ranked the band #7 on

Page | 11 its list of the 25 Best Hip-Hop Groups of All Time, calling them "Hip-hop's first legitimate band." Ruby Dee: Ruby Dee is an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, activist, and widow of actor Ossie Davis. She is perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and the film American Gangster (2007) for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has won Grammy, Emmy, Obie, Drama Desk, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Awards. She is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors, among scores of others awards. Dee is a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the NAACP, the Student Non- violent Coordinating Committee, Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Southern Christian Leader- ship Conference. Dee was a personal friend of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Run-DMC: Run-D.M.C. was an American hip hop group from Hollis, Queens, New York, founded in 1981 by Joseph "Run" Simmons, Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels, and Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell. The group is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential acts in the history of hip hop culture. Run-D.M.C. was one of the most well-known hip hop acts in the 1980s who, along with LL Cool J, The Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy signified the advent of the new school of hip hop music. They were the first group in the genre to have a gold album (Run-D.M.C., 1984) and be nominated for a Grammy Award. They were the first to earn a platinum record (King of Rock, 1985), the first to earn a multiplatinum certification (Raising Hell, 1986) the first to have videos on MTV, the first to appear on American Bandstand and the cover of Rolling Stone. Run-D.M.C. was the only hip hop act to perform at Live Aid in 1985. The group was among the first to highlight the importance of the MC and DJ relationship. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked them number 48 in their list of the greatest musical artists of all time. In 2007, Run-D.M.C. was named "The Greatest Hip Hop Group of All Time" by MTV.com and "Greatest Hip Hop Artist of All Time" by VH1. On April 4, 2009, rapper Eminem inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In doing so, Run-D.M.C. became only the second hip hop group in history to be inducted, after Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Rwanda: Rwanda is a sovereign state in central and east Africa. It is most famously known for the unrest created by Belgium settlers through separation of natives into two arbitrary groups; the Hutu and the Tutsi. In the mid 50’s, Tension escalated between the Tutsi, who favored early independence, and the Hutu emancipation movement, culminating in the 1959 Rwandan Revolution: Hutu activists began killing Tutsi, forcing more than 100,000 to seek refuge in neighboring countries. In 1961, the now pro-Hutu Belgians held a referendum in which the country voted to abolish the monarchy. Rwanda was separated from Burundi and gained independence in 1962. Cycles of violence followed, with exiled Tutsi attacking from neighboring countries and the Hutu retaliating with large-scale slaughter and repression of the Tutsi. In 1973, Juvénal Habyarimana

Page | 12 took power in a military coup. Pro-Hutu discrimination continued, but there was greater economic prosperity and a reduced amount of violence against Tutsi. The Twa remained marginalized, and by 1990 were almost entirely forced out of the forests by the government; many became beggars. Rwanda's population had increased from 1.6 million people in 1934 to 7.1 million in 1989, leading to competition for land. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda, initiating the Rwandan Civil War. Neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage in the war, but by 1992 it had weakened Habyarimana's authority; mass demonstrations forced him into a coalition with the domestic opposition and eventually to sign the 1993 Arusha Accords with the RPF. The cease-fire ended on 6 April 1994 when Habyarimana's plane was shot down near Kigali Airport, killing him. The shooting down of the plane served as the catalyst for the Rwandan Genocide, which began within a few hours. Over the course of approximately 100 days, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu were killed in well-planned attacks on the orders of the interim government. Many Twa were also killed, despite not being directly targeted. The Tutsi RPF restarted their offensive, and took control of the country methodically, gaining control of the whole country by mid-July. The international response to the Genocide was limited, with major powers reluctant to strengthen the already overstretched UN peacekeeping force. Saddam Hussein: Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region—which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism— Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup (later referred to as the 17 July Revolution) that brought the party to power in Iraq. Sidney Poitier: Sir Sidney Poitier is a Bahamian-American actor, film director, author, and diplomat. In 1964, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field. The significance of this achievement was later bolstered in 1967 when he starred in three successful films, all of which dealt with issues involving race: To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box-office star of that year. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking 22nd on the list of 25. Poitier has directed a number of popular movies, such as A Piece of the Action, Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again, (with friend Bill Cosby), Stir Crazy (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder) and Ghost Dad (also with Cosby). In 2002, thirty-eight years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Award, designated "To Sidney Poitier in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being." Since 1997, he has been the Bahamian ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Sidney Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal

Page | 13 of Freedom, the United States of America's highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama. Skinheads: A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in , England in the 1960s and then soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, and later to other countries around the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian (specifically Jamaican) rude boys and British mods, in terms of fashion, music and lifestyle. Originally, the skinhead subculture was mainly based on those elements, not politics or race—in fact many British Skinheads during the 1960s were Black. Eventually, political affiliations grew in significance for the skinhead subculture, and now the political spectrum within the subculture spans from far right to far left, although many skinheads describe themselves as apolitical. Contemporary skinhead fashions range from clean- cut 1960s mod-influenced styles to less-strict punk- and hardcore-influenced styles Soul Train: Soul Train is an American musical variety television program, which aired in syndication from 1971 until 2006. In its 35-year history, the show primarily featured performances by R&B, soul, and hip hop artists, although funk, jazz, disco, and gospel artists have also appeared. The origins of Soul Train can be traced to 1965 when WCIU-TV, an upstart UHF station in Chicago, began airing two youth-oriented dance programs: Kiddie-a-Go-Go and Red Hot and Blues. These programs—specifically the latter, which featured a predominantly African American group of in-studio dancers—would set the stage for what was to come to the station several years later. Don Cornelius, a news reader and backup disc jockey at Chicago radio station WVON, was hired by WCIU in 1967 as a news and sports reporter. Cornelius also was promoting and emceeing a touring series of concerts featuring local talent (sometimes called "record hops") at Chicago-area high schools, calling his traveling caravan of shows "The Soul Train." WCIU-TV took notice of Cornelius's outside work and in 1970, allowed him the opportunity to bring his road show to television. After securing a sponsorship deal with the Chicago-based retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co., Soul Train premiered on WCIU-TV on August 17, 1970, as a live show airing weekday afternoons. The first episode of the program featured Jerry Butler, the Chi-Lites, and the Emotions as guests. Cornelius was assisted by Clinton Ghent, a local professional dancer who appeared on early episodes before moving behind the scenes as a producer and secondary host. : Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983. Lee's movies have examined race relations, colorism in the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. Lee has won numerous awards, including an Emmy Award. He has also received two Academy Award nominations.

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Lee's thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, was the first student film to be showcased in Lincoln Center's New Directors New Films Festival. Lee's 1989 film Do the Right Thing was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1989. Many people, including Hollywood's Kim Basinger believed that Do the Right Thing also deserved a Best Picture nomination. Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture that year. Lee said in an April 7, 2006 interview with New York Magazine that the other film's success, which he thought was based on safe stereotypes, hurt him more than if his film had not been nominated for an award. After the 1990 release of Mo' Better Blues, Lee was accused of antisemitism by the Anti- Defamation League and several film critics. They criticized the characters of the club owners Josh and Moe Flatbush, described as "Shylocks". Lee denied the charge, explaining that he wrote those characters in order to depict how black artists struggled against exploitation. Lee said that , Sidney Sheinberg or Tom Pollock, the Jewish heads of MCA and Universal Studios, were unlikely to allow antisemitic content in a film they produced. He said he could not make an antisemitic film because Jews run Hollywood, and "that's a fact." His 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls, about the children killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, was nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award. Stonewall Riots: The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for gay and lesbian rights in the United States. Gay Americans in the 1950s and 1960s faced a legal system more anti-homosexual than those of some Warsaw Pact countries. Early homophile groups in the U.S. sought to prove that gay people could be assimilated into society, and they favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. The last years of the 1960s, however, were very contentious, as many social movements were active, including the African American Civil Rights Movement, the Counterculture of the 1960s, and antiwar demonstrations. These influences, along with the liberal environment of Greenwich Village, served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots. Super Fly: Super Fly is a 1972 Blaxploitation film directed by Gordon Parks, Jr., starring Ron O'Neal as Youngblood Priest, an African American cocaine dealer who is trying to quit the underworld drug business. This film is known for its soundtrack, written and produced by soul singer Curtis Mayfield. Super Fly is one of the few films ever to have been outgrossed by its soundtrack. Leading man O'Neal reprised his role as Youngblood Priest and directed a sequel to the film that was released a year later in 1973, Super Fly T.N.T. Super Fly producer Sig Shore directed a second sequel in 1990, The Return of Super Fly.

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Tracks: Tracking is one of the most commonly used methods as it is quite fast and lasts considerably longer than the other techniques. However, It does not allow for use of regular hair mainten- ance. Tracking involves the braiding of a person's natural hair. In order to prevent the hair from being bumpy or uneven the hair is sewn horizontally across the head from one side to the other starting from the bottom. The braided hair is then sewn down and the hair weft extensions are sewn onto the braids. A weave can consist of a few tracks, or the whole head can be braided for a full head weave. With a full head weave, the braids are sewn down or covered with a net. Extensions are then sewn to the braids. The number of tracks used depends on the desired look. A hair weave is human or artificial hair utilized for the integration with one's natural hair. Weaves can alter one's appearance for long or short periods of time by adding further hair to one's natural hair or by covering the natural hair all together with human or synthetic hair- pieces. Weaving additional human or synthetic pieces can enhance one's hair by giving it volume, length and adding color without the damage of chemicals or adopting a different hair texture than that of their own. However, hair loss can occur either along the front hairline or above the ears due to the wearing of specific hairstyles for a prolonged period of time, such as weaves. Such hair loss in known as traction alopecia. The idea of hair weaves and extensions first came about in the early days of Ancient Egypt, where men and women utilized extensions in their hair to portray a more elegant appearance. By the late 17th century, wigs in various shapes and sizes became a latest fashion trend. Hair weaves in particular, did not grow interest until the 1950s; even during that time, celebrities had been the only ones using them. When the “long, disco-haired” era evolved there started to become a widespread of hair weave. Since that era, hair weave has only become more popular. Most human hair weaves come from parts of Asia and India. This is because Indian hair is easily blended with hair of women in other countries. Tupac: Tupac Amaru Shakur, also known by his stage names 2Pac and briefly as Makaveli, was an American rapper and actor. Shakur has sold over 75 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. MTV ranked him at number two on their list of The Greatest MCs of All Time and Rolling Stone named him the 86th Greatest Artist of All Time. His double disc album All Eyez on Me is one of the best-selling hip hop albums of all time. Shakur began his career as a roadie, backup dancer, and MC for the alternative hip hop group Digital Underground, eventually branching off as a solo artist. The themes of most of Shakur's songs revolved around the violence and hardship in inner cities, racism and other social problems. Both of his parents and several other of his family were members of the Black Panther Party, whose ideals were reflected in his songs. On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was taken to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where he died six days later.

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Glossary of People (1932 – Present) Young became a trusted aid of Dr. King during the Civil Rights Move- ment, eventually becoming the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership conference, the organization that Dr. King led. Young assisted in the organization of "citizenship schools" for the SCLC, workshops that taught nonviolent organizing strategies to local people whom members of the organization had identified as potential leaders. The schools served rural, typically uneducated blacks who sometimes chafed under Young's leadership. Differences in education and economic background between Young and other Young, King, and Abernathyblack leaders of that time may have caused some to consider him elitist. Nonetheless, the citizenship schools educated a generation of civic leaders and registered thousands of voters y throughout the South, and were largely responsible for both the civil rights movement's democratic ethos and its eventual success. He was present at the assassination of Dr. King in 1968. He later went on to win a seat in the House of Representatives in Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District, the first African American to be elected to Congress from Georgia since Reconstruction.

Corretta Scott King (1927 – 2006) Coretta Scott met Dr. King in Boston when she was studying concert singing at the New England Conservatory of Music. They were married on June 18, 1953 and moved to Montgomery, Alabama when Dr. King accepted the appointment of Pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Together, they had four children (Yolanda, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice.) She was, like her husband, a huge supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, often participating in many of the events and exploits of Dr. King. From the earliest days, however, she balanced mothering and Movement work, speaking before church, college, fraternal civic, and peace groups. She conceived and performed a series of favorably-reviewed Freedom Concerts which combined prose and poetry narration with musical selections and functioned as significant fundraisers for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the direct action organization of which Dr. King served as first president. In 1957, she and Dr. King journeyed to Ghana to mark that country’s independence. In 1958, they spent a belated honeymoon in Mexico, where they observed first- hand the immense gulf between extreme wealth and extreme poverty. In 1959, Dr. and Mrs. King spent nearly a month in India on a pilgrimage to disciples and sites associated with Mahatma Gandhi. In 1964, she accompanied him to Oslo, Norway, where he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Even prior to her husband’s public stand against the Vietnam War in 1967, Mrs.

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King functioned as liaison to peace and justice organizations, and as mediator to public officials on behalf of the unheard. After her husband’s assassination, she became a more prominent figure in the center of the movement, not only as the wife of Dr. King, but as a leader of the Women’s movement. She channeled her grief into building The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

Henry Loeb (1920 – 1992) Loeb was mayor during what came to be known as the Memphis Sanitation Strike of 1968. About 1,300 African-American members of Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) engaged in a 64-day strike for improved wages, working conditions, and union recognition. This conflict, and racial violence that spread throughout the city in its wake, brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to visit Memphis in late March of that year in order to assist AFSCME in their negotiations with Loeb and other city officials and work alongside other Civil Rights leaders in raising consciousness about the low pay and mistreatment suffered by the workers. However, on April 4, King was assassinated. In the nationwide rioting that followed April 4–5, Loeb installed a curfew.

Jesse Jackson (1941 – Present) Jesse Jackson is an American civil rights activist and a Baptist minister. His campaigns for president in 1984 and 1988 were largely unsuccessful, but he continues to be a voice on the American politics scene. Jesse Jackson Sr. clashed with Martin Luther King Jr. on a number of occasions during the Sixties, and he has often overstated the closeness of his relationship to King—even claiming to have been the last person King spoke to after he had been mortally wounded by an assassin's bullet on April 4, 1968. Specifically, Jackson claimed that he was on the balcony with King immediately after the latter had been shot, and that he had cradled the dying civil-rights leader in his arms as he took his final breaths. But in fact, at the moment King was shot, Jackson was actually in a nearby parking lot talking to a group of musicians. On November 3, 1983, he announced his campaign for President of the United States in the 1984 election, becoming the second African American (after Shirley Chisholm) to mount a nationwide campaign for president. In the Democratic Party primaries, Jackson, who had been written off by pundits as a fringe candidate with little chance at winning the nomination, surprised many when he took third place behind Senator Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale, who eventually won the nomination. Jackson garnered 3,282,431 primary votes, or 18.2 percent of the total, in

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1wikipedia.org 1984, and won three to five primaries and caucuses, including Louisiana, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, and one of two separate contests in Mississippi. More Virginia caucus-goers supported Jesse Jackson than any other candidate, but Walter Mondale won more Virginia delegates.

Larry Payne (1952 – 1968) Larry Payne was a sixteen year old African American who was killed by Memphis police officers in 1968. On March 28 over five thousand demonstrators, carrying signs which read "I Am A Man," participated in King's march. However, the peaceful demonstration took a turn for the worse when an estimated two hundred participants began breaking storefront windows and looting. The ensuing violence resulted in the death of Larry Payne, the imposition of a city-wide curfew, and the mobilization of nearly four thousand National Guard troops.

2wikipedia.orgMalcolm X (1925 – 1965) Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Earl, a Baptist minister and follower of the Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, was under continuous threat by the Ku Klux Klan. The family moved to Lansing, Michigan, where their house was burned by white racists in 1929, and, in 1931, Earl was murdered. Malcolm’s mother had a nervous break- down and the eight children were sent to various foster homes. The top student and only African-American in his eighth grade class, Malcolm dropped out of school after his teacher told him that a “nigger” could never become a lawyer — his dream. He went to Boston to live with his sister Ella, and turned to crime. He became a street hustler and in 1946 he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years. While in prison, he began a period of education and self-transformation. He joined The Nation of Islam, a black supremacist group headed by Elijah Muhammad. He took “X” as his last name, signifying his unknown African tribal name that had been lost when his family was given the slave name “Little.” After his parole in 1952, Malcolm X became a brilliant and charismatic speaker, building the Nation of Islam from 400 to 30,000 members. In 1964 Malcolm broke with the Nation and formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Journeying to Mecca, the holiest of Muslim shrines, he took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and began speaking of international black consciousness and integration rather than racial separatism. His change of views targeted him for assassination by some members of the Nation of Islam. While preparing to speak in a Harlem ballroom on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot and killed by three assassins from the Nation of Islam. It is still unclear what role the FBI, which had Malcolm X under surveillance, may have played in his death.

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Historians consider Malcolm X among the half-dozen most influential African-American leaders. His book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with Alex Haley and published posthumously, is considered one of the most important non-fiction books of the 20th Century. Many black people felt that Malcolm X, by voicing the truth of their frustration and anger, gave them courage and self-respect. He told African-Americans that they had to stop defining themselves as whites had defined them in terms of subservience and inferiority. His message was one of strength, pride, and truth.

Ralph Abernathy (1926 – 1990) was a close friend of Dr. King’s and one of the prominent leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The of 1955-56, sparked by Rosa Parks's refusal to relinquish her bus seat to a white man, inspired King and Abernathy to establish the Montgomery Improvement Association. This group provided leadership for the successful boycott of the city's segregated bus system. The boycott marked the beginning of the civil rights movement. In the hope of building upon this victory, Abernathy and King, along with other black southern ministers, established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Their goal was to form an organization that would supply the civil rights movement with sustained leadership. King was elected president, the Reverend C. K. Steele vice president, and Abernathy secretary-treasurer. Committed to the nonviolent struggle for civil rights, the SCLC adopted the motto "Not one hair of one head of one white person shall be harmed." In 1961 Abernathy became pastor of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta and was named SCLC vice president, thereby becoming King's lieutenant and apparent heir. It was also in 1961 that Abernathy and King were summoned to Albany to lead a boycott of that city's segregated public transportation system. Although they arrived in Albany with high enthusiasm and noble goals, the results in what became known as the were far from triumphant. Abernathy and King were arrested several times and soon left southwest Georgia, without resolving the problems there. When King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, Abernathy succeeded him as SCLC president. His new responsibilities provided him little time to mourn the death of his friend. Less than a week after the assassination, Abernathy led a march to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. In May 1968 he organized the Poor People's Campaign March on Washington, D.C. Hoping to bring attention to the plight of the nation's impoverished, he constructed huts in the nation's capital, precipitating a showdown with the police. Ignoring orders to remove the huts, he was jailed for nearly three weeks.

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Rosa Parks (1913 – 2005) Rosa Parks is often considered the catalyst for the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. On December 1, 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation ordinances. Under the aegis of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the leadership of the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr., a boycott of the municipal bus company was begun on December 5. (African Americans constituted some 70 percent of the ridership.) On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated seating unconstitutional, and the court order was served on December 20; the boycott ended the following day. For her role in igniting the successful campaign, which brought King to national prominence, Parks became known as the “mother of the civil rights movement.”

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Specific Facts about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

Family: His legal name at birth was "Michael King.” King's father was also born Michael King. The father "changed" both names on his own during a 1934 trip to Nazi Germany to attend the Fifth Baptist World Alliance Congress in Berlin. It was during this time he chose to be called Martin Luther King in honor of the great German reformer Martin Luther. Martin, Jr., was a middle child, between an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. In 1953, he married Coretta Scott and they became the parents of four children (Yolanda, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice). As a preacher: King was originally skeptical of many of Christianity's claims. At the age of thirteen, he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school. From this point, he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly”. However, he later concluded that the Bible has "many profound truths which one cannot escape" and decided to enter the seminary. King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, when he was twenty-five years old, in 1954. As a Christian minister, his main influence was Jesus Christ and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his religious meetings, speeches at church, and in public discourses. King's faith was strongly based in Jesus' commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself, loving God above all, and loving your enemies, praying for them and blessing them. His non-violent thought was also based in the injunction to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus' teaching of putting the sword back into its place (Matthew 26:52). In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King urged action consistent with what he describes as Jesus' "extremist" love, and also quoted numerous other Christian pacifist authors, which was very usual for him.

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Allegation of Affairs: Having concluded that King was dangerous due to communist infiltration, the FBI shifted to attempting to discredit King through revelations regarding his private life. FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he also engaged in numer- ous extramarital affairs. Lyndon Johnson once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher". Ralph Abernathy stated that King had a "weakness for women", although they "all under- stood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation”. In a later interview, Abernathy said that he only wrote the term "womanizing", that he did not specifically say King had extramarital sex and that the infidelities King had were emotional rather than sexual. Abernathy criticized the media for sensationalizing the statements he wrote about King's affairs, such as the allegation that he admitted in his book that King had a sexual affair the night before he was assassinated. In his original wording, Abernathy had claimed he saw King coming out of his room with a lady when he awoke the next morning and later claimed that "he may have been in there discussing and debating and trying to get her to go along with the movement, I don't know." In his 1986 book , David Garrow wrote about a number of extramarital affairs, including one woman King saw almost daily. According to Garrow, "that relationship ... increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King's life, but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings ... of King's travels." He alleged that King explained his extramarital affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction". Garrow asserted that King's supposed promiscuity caused him "painful and at times overwhelming guilt". King's wife Coretta appeared to have accepted his affairs with equanimity, saying once that "all that other business just doesn't have a place in the very high level relationship we enjoyed." Accusation of Communism: For years, Hoover had been suspicious about potential influence of communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights. Hoover directed the FBI to track King in 1957, and the SCLC as it was established (it did not have a full-time executive director until 1960). The investigations were largely superficial until 1962, when the FBI learned that one of King's most trusted advisers was New York City lawyer Stanley Levison. The FBI feared Levison was working as an "agent of influence" over King, in spite of its own reports in 1963 that Levison had left the Party and was no longer associated in business dealings with them. Another King lieutenant, Hunter Pitts O'Dell, was also linked to the Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). However, by 1976 the FBI had acknowledged that it had not obtained any evidence that King himself or the SCLC were actually involved with any communist organizations. For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to communism, stating in a 1965 Playboy interview that "there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida". He argued that Hoover was "following the path of appeasement of political powers in the South" and that his concern for communist infiltration of the civil rights movement was meant to "aid and abet the salacious claims of southern racists and the

Page | 23 extreme right-wing elements". Hoover did not believe King's pledge of innocence and replied by saying that King was "the most notorious liar in the country". After King gave his "" speech during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, the FBI described King as "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country". It alleged that he was "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists". Health: “You might be thirty-nine but you got the heart of a sixty-year old.”– Camae (pg. 35) According to Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that though he was only 39 years old, he had the heart of a 60-year-old man which Branch attributed to the stress of 13 years in the civil rights movement.

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Events and Figures of the Civil Rights Movements in the 1960’s Black Panthers: The Black Panther Party, original name Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was an African American revolutionary party, founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The party’s original purpose was to patrol African American neighborhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality. The Panthers eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group that called for the arming of all African Americans, the exemption of African Americans from the draft and from all sanctions of so-called white America, the release of all African Americans from jail, and the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation by white Americans. At its peak in the late 1960s, Panther membership exceeded 2,000, and the organization operated chapters in several major American cities. Church bombings: Many of the civil rights protest marches that took place in Birmingham during the 1960s began at the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had long been a significant religious center for the city’s black population and a routine meeting place for civil rights organizers like King. KKK members had routinely called in bomb threats intended to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the church. At 10:22 a.m. on the morning of September 15, 1963, some 200 church members were in the building–many attending Sunday school classes before the start of the 11 am service–when the bomb detonated on the church’s east side, spraying mortar and bricks from the front of the church and caving in its interior walls. Most parishioners were able to evacuate the building as it filled with smoke, but the bodies of four young girls (14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Denise McNair) were found beneath the rubble in a basement restroom. Ten-year-old Sarah Collins, who was also in the restroom at the time of the explosion, lost her right eye, and more than 20 other people were injured in the blast. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15 was the third bombing in 11 days, after a federal court order had come down mandating the integration of Alabama’s school system. In the aftermath of the bombing, thousands of angry black protesters gathered at the scene of the bombing. When Governor Wallace sent police and state troopers to break the protests up, violence broke out across the city; a number of protesters were arrested, and two young African American men were killed (one by police) before the National Guard was

Page | 25 called in to restore order. King later spoke before 8,000 people at the funeral for three of the girls (the family of the fourth girl held a smaller private service), fueling the public outrage now mounting across the country. Detroit riots: The Detroit Riot of 1967 began when police vice squad officers executed a raid on an after hours drinking club or “blind pig” in a predominantly black neighborhoods located at Twelfth Street and Clairmount Avenue. They were expecting to round up a few patrons, but instead found 82 people inside holding a party for two returning Vietnam veterans. Yet, the officers attempted to arrest everyone who was on the scene. While the police awaited a “clean-up crew” to transport the arrestees, a crowd gathered around the establishment in protest. After the last police car left, a small group of men who were “confused and upset because they were kicked out of the only place they had to go” lifted up the bars of an adjacent clothing store and broke the windows. From this point of origin, further reports of vandalism diffused. Looting and fires spread through the Northwest side of Detroit, then crossed over to the East Side. Within 48 hours, the National Guard was mobilized, to be followed by the 82nd airborne on the riot’s fourth day. As police and military troops sought to regain control of the city, violence escalated. At the conclusion of 5 days of rioting, 43 people lay dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 people had been arrested. Lynching during the Civil Rights Movement: By the 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. Membership in the NAACP increased in states across the country. The NAACP achieved a significant U.S. Supreme Court victory in 1954 ruling that segregated education was unconstitutional. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of Emmett Till, a 14- year-old boy from Chicago. Spending the summer with relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till was killed for allegedly having wolf-whistled at a white woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head before being thrown into the Tallahatchie River, his body weighed down with a 70-pound (32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His mother insisted on a public funeral with an open casket, to show people how badly Till's body had been disfigured. News photographs circulated around the country, and drew intense public reaction. People in the nation were horrified that a boy could have been killed for such an incident. The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted. In the 1960s the Civil Rights Movement attracted students to the South from all over the country to work on voter registration and other issues. The intervention of people from outside the communities and threat of social change aroused fear and resentment among many whites. In June 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi. They had been investigating the arson of a black church being used as a "Freedom School". Six weeks later, their bodies were found in a partially constructed dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

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James Chaney of Meridian, Mississippi, and Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman of New York had been members of the Congress of Racial Equality. They had been dedicated to non- violent direct action against racial discrimination. The United States prosecuted 18 men for a Ku Klux Klan conspiracy to deprive the victims of their civil rights under 19th-century Federal law, in order to prosecute the crime in Federal court. Seven men were convicted but received light sentences, two men were released because of a deadlocked jury, and the remainder were acquitted. In 2005, 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, one of the men who had earlier gone free, was retried by the state of Mississippi, convicted of three counts of manslaughter in a new trial, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. March on Washington: On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., for a political rally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized by a number of civil rights and religious groups, the event was designed to shed light on the political and social challenges African Americans continued to face across the country. The march, which became a key moment in the growing struggle for civil rights in the United States, culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for racial justice and equality. Poor People’s Campaign: In early 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders planned a Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C., for the spring. The group planned to demand that President Lyndon Johnson and Congress help the poor get jobs, health care and decent homes. Campaign organizers intended the campaign to be a peaceful gathering of poor people from communities across the nation. They would march through the capital and visit various federal agencies in hopes of getting Congress to pass substantial anti-poverty legislation. They planned to stay until some action was taken. But weeks before the march was to take place, King was assassinated. His widow, Coretta, and a cadre of black ministers, including the Revs. Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, decided they would pick up where King had left off and that the Poor People's March on Washington would go forward. Thousands of people participated in the march on May 12, 1968.

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Sit-ins: Four African American college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the local Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for coffee. When service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be served. The civil rights sit-in was born. No one participated in a sit-in of this sort without seriousness of purpose. The instructions were simple: sit quietly and wait to be served. Often the participants would be jeered and threatened by local customers. Sometimes they would be pelted with food or ketchup. Angry onlookers tried to provoke fights that never came. 3www.learnnc.org In the event of a physical attack, the student would curl up into a ball on the floor and take the punishment. Any violent reprisal would undermine the spirit of the sit-in. When the local police came to arrest the demonstrators, another line of students would take the vacated seats. Sit-in organizers believed that if the violence were only on the part of the white community, the world would see the righteousness of their cause. Before the end of the school year, over 1500 black demonstrators were arrested. But their sacrifice brought results. Slowly, but surely, restaurants throughout the South began to abandon their policies of segregation.

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Timeline leading up to April 4, 1968 January 31: Due to inclement weather, Memphis sanitation workers are sent home early for the day. Though they all worked the same hours, black workers are only paid for two hours of work whereas white workers receive a full day’s pay. February 12: 1,300 black sanitation workers go on strike and the City of Memphis refuse to negotiate their terms. March 18: King visits Memphis and speaks to 15,000 people gathered, promising to support the workers in the community. March 28: King leads striking sanitation workers in a march in Memphis, Tennessee. The march erupts in violence and looting from inside the group of protesters, the first time that one of King’s marches spiraled out of control. King was rushed from the scene. Distressed and determined to remain on the path of non-violent resistance, civil rights leaders schedule another march for April 8th. April 3: King’s flight into Memphis is delayed due to a bomb threat. Later that evening, King delivers his last speech at a rally at Mason Temple (the national headquarters of the Church of God in Christ), Memphis. His famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech contains references to the death threats against him, specifically the bomb threat that delayed his plane to Memphis. He charges those assembled that, even if he met an untimely end, they should carry on without him. April 4: At 6:01 PM, while standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee Dr. Martin Luther King is shot. The bullet entered through his right check and traveled down his spinal cord. After emergency chest surgery, Dr. King was pronounced dead at 7:05 PM at St. Joseph’s Hospital. He was buried on April 9th.

4http://www.maryferrell.org

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Excerpts from MLK Speech, April 3, 1968 History: Given the Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968, the haunting words of Dr. King’s speech seem an eerie foreshadowing of his assassination the following day. Concerned with the Memphis Sanitation Strike, Dr. King referenced the Declaration of Independence and continued to propagate a mission of non-violent resistance. This was his last public speech. Speech: “Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" […] Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy."

“Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee -- the cry is always the same: "We want to be free.” […]

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind.”

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!

“And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

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About the Play The Mountaintop Katori Hall was inspired to write The Mountaintop based on a story her mother told her as a child. Carrie Mae Golden (who the character Camae is based on) was living in Memphis during the time of the Civil Rights Movement and had the opportunity to hear King’s last speech on April 3, 1968. However, the family was too afraid of the threats of violence and bombing and, like many Memphis citizens, stayed away from the Mason Temple that night. Karoti Hall says that this story “planted a seed in me so deep that when I got the skill and the desire and passion to write the story, I took it on.” Hall grew up in Memphis, close to the Lorrain Motel where King was assassinated. The legacy surrounding this famous leader was a constant presence in her life and when she began studying playwriting at Julliard, she started putting this story on paper. After receiving a production on London’s West End, it one the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play of 2012. Hall was the first black female playwright to receive the award. The Broadway premier in 2011 starred Samuel L. Jackson and . About the play, Michael Eric Dyson writes: Hall may not be a historian, but her art is eerily accurate. She conjures fictional scenes that nourish us with an understanding that dry facts alone starve us of. […]. Hall peers brilliantly into the shadows of King’s last night on earth and lights it briefly on the monumental speech he pulled from the core of his soul. King’s words dripped in death, but Hall convinces us that King wasn’t simple addressing his immediate circumstances, but speaking to the specter of imminent death that dogged him most of his life.

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About the Playwright Katori Hall Katori Hall is a playwright/performer from Memphis, TN. Hall’s plays include: The Mountaintop (2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play), Hurt Village (2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Signature Theatre), Children of Killers (National Theatre, UK and Castillo Theatre, NYC), Hoodoo Love (Cherry Lane Theatre), Remembrance (Women’s Project), Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, WHADDA- BLOODCLOT!!! (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Our Lady of Kibeho and Pussy Valley. Her awards include the Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, the American Voices New Play Residency, the Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, two Lecomte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, a NYFA Fellowship, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award. Hall’s journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, UK’s The Guardian, Essence and The Commercial Appeal, including contributing reporting for Newsweek. The Mountaintop and Katori Hall: Plays One are published by Methuen Drama. Hall is an alumna of the Lark Playwrights’ Workshop, where she developed The Mountaintop, and a graduate of , the A.R.T. at Harvard University, and the Juilliard School. She is a proud member of the Ron Brown Scholar Program, the Coca-Cola Scholar Program, the Dramatists Guild, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She is currently a member of the Residency Five at Signature Theatre Company in New York City.

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