NEWS

---

Monday, June 16, 2014 

By Nolan Williams, Jr. | The Parkside Journal

Don Sterling. No doubt, this name has become a lightning rod in the past few weeks.  The recordings and subsequent interviews that capture Sterling’s extremist and inflammatory remarks, have reignited the dialogue about race in America. The downside is that this current dialogue has been incited by a controversial event and therefore limited to this particular controversy. Thus, we vilify Sterling, take solace in the NBA Commissioner’s tough stance, and then go back to business as usual – all the while avoiding deeper engagement or discussion about race.

Deeper engagement means facing some blatant truths.  TRUTH is racism is not new, and is not dead. TRUTH is the story of the fight for civil rights in America is both an innate and continuing saga. It is innate because race has been an integral part of our history since the first Africans were brought to North America over 400 years ago. It has only been 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that eliminated most of the remnants of legalized racial segregation and discrimination. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that only a relatively small portion of America’s history has been spent undoing, addressing, and correcting racial wrongs that have existed over several centuries.

 Dare to go deeper? 

 If so, here’s another name for you: Octavius V. Catto (‘CAT-toe’).   It’s not a name you’ll find in many history books. In fact, the history of Philadelphia has oft been told with the willful exclusion of his name. Yet, his is a story that merits telling: (1) of how he and his contemporaries secured voting rights and integrated the public transit system in their day; (2) of how he was a manager and player for the Philadelphia Pytheons, a Black baseball team that predates the Negro Baseball League; (3) of how he was a scholar and teacher, an extraordinary feat for a Black man born in 1839, who taught math, English and classic languages at the Institute for Colored Youth (later Cheyney University, the nation’s first historically Black university); (4) of how he worked alongside Frederick Douglass to recruit 11 regiments of colored soldiers from Philadelphia to fight in the Civil War; and (5) finally, how he was murdered on Election Day in 1871, at the hand of Frank Kelly, for leading a get-out-the-vote drive that rallied scores of Black Republican men in Philadelphia to the polls, upsetting Irish Democratic immigrants who feared a loss of employment and economic opportunities if they lost that election.  And of how Kelly was never convicted of his crime. 

Unfortunately, Catto’s story was never a media sensation, nor a hot trending topic.  But, for people of good will, people who dare to engage beyond the salacious headlines of the Sterling scandal, Catto’s story is one we should share because it aids us greatly in the critical process of undoing, unlearning, redressing and correcting.

The Mann Center for the Performing Arts is honored to play a role in that process. We are in the midst of an unprecedented series of free concerts and forums called the Philadelphia Freedom Festival which culminates on July 19 with a free “Gospel Meets Symphony” concert with gospel artist Marvin Sapp, soprano Barbara Walker, The Philadelphia Orchestra and a community gospel choir.

The Mann is joined by others in our community, like the organizers of the planned Catto statue at City Hall and The Philadelphia Inquirer reporters who authored the landmark book on Catto, Tasting Freedom, in leveraging the power of the arts to positively move race dialogue and race relations in Philadelphia forward.

Read the original article here. 

"Rise Up and Fight," penned by award-winning American composer Nolan Williams, Jr., was premiered on The Kennedy Center Concert Hall stage on Monday, January 15. The premiere was a highlight of the 2024 Let Freedom Ring Concert, Georgetown University’s annual commemoration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The performance featured Broadway stars Benjamin H. Moore (HARMONY) and John Riddle (BEAUTY & THE BEAST), singing sensation Rayshun LaMarr (NBC’s The Voice), Helen Hayes Award-winning Nova Y. Payton, Teriauna Duran, and the NEWorks Voices of America, with stage direction by Niegel Smith (associate director of the Tony Award winning musical FELA!) and music direction by Nolan Williams, Jr., Warren Jones, Phil Lassiter, and Daryl L.A. Hunt.

Music has long served a critical role in inspiring and mobilizing the masses. This was certainly the case with the Civil Rights Movement. As Martin Luther King, Jr. remarked during the Albany Movement: 

“The freedom songs are playing a strong and vital role in our struggle... They give the people new courage and a sense of unity. ...They keep alive a faith, a radiant hope in the future, particularly in our most trying hours.” 

In this tradition, award-winning American composer Nolan Williams, Jr. has penned a new anthem as a call to action for the 2024 national election cycle. Williams Jr.’s “Rise Up and Fight!” is written in the voices of James Earle Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, three civil rights workers who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi during “Freedom Summer.” 

In the song, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner return 60 years later to evaluate progress made since their untimely deaths. They are disheartened to discover that not much has changed on the civil rights front. In fact, in some ways, things are worse. They issue a call-to-action to their audience: “We’ve come too far to just resign. Now is the time to rise and fight, fight for what is right!”