In the battle for equal rights, many Americans who supported the civil rights movement did not march or publicly protest. They instead engaged with the debates of the day through art and culture. Ruth Feldstein, author of How it Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement, joined us in our New York offices to discuss the ways in which culture became a battleground and to share the stories of the female performers who played important but sometimes subtle roles in the civil rights movement.
Ruth Feldstein on the ways artists used their art to advance the civil rights movement:
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Ruth Feldstein on Lena Horne’s legacy:
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Nina Simone as an activist:
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Ruth Feldstein is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, Newark. She is the author of How it Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement and Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930-1965.
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McCaughrean, Geraldine. 2011.
The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen. New York: Harper.
Out of prarie desperation tumble the most amusing predicaments you've read in ages! It's like Mark Twain for kids.
Cissy Sissney lives in the prairie railroad stop of Olive Town, circa 1890. Since her beloved teacher, Miss Loucien left town with The Bright Lights, a traveling theater group, life hasn't been the same.
Beyond the window, a great tidal wave of Boredom rolled in from the eastern horizon, then broke over the school roofs and Main Street and the silo and the umbrella factory before rolling on to the western horizon. Cissy knew the color of boredom; it was the color of prairie. It was the color of northwest Oklahoma. It was the color of schoolday afternoons. Sometimes she thought they sky had been nailed down on Olive Town like a crate lid and that she was suffocating on Boredom.
And things were about to get worse. School might be boring, but at least she had friends there, including her best friend, Habakkuk (Kookie) Warboys. Now her mother wanted her to give up school, work full time in the family shop. Her father's
heart ached for his little girl whose life had suddenly shrunk in the wash from a costume gown into a shopgirl's apron.
But life has a way of changing the best laid plans. A runaway silo accident (!) destroys Cissy's family's store and severely injures her father. To make matters worse, there is a diphtheria outbreak out in Olive Town. Soon Cissy, Kookie, and the beautiful Tibbie Bolden, find themselves in the care of their prim and proper new schoolteacher, Miss May March. All are bound for refuge in Salvation - the town of Salvation, that is, current and temporary home of Mrs. Lucien Shades Crew and the Bright Lights Theater Company - at least until they can get Curly out of jail.
The Bright Lights Theater Company, currently residing in a grounded paddle wheeler, takes a highly unanticipated journey downriver, meeting up with actors, entertainers, gamblers, rogues - a complete cast of "characters!" And subject to their many unexpected situations, they become in turn The Bright Lights Theater & Shipwrecking Company, The Bright Lights Theater & Funeral Company, and The Bright Lights Theater, Last Ditch & Final Curtain Company. The Bright Lights "family" takes it all in stride. As Henry, the Bright Lights' English butler reminds Cissy,
Yesterday I was a butler, Miss Cecelia. Today I seem to be the Prime Minister of England, ... Sometimes life has a way of asking us to take a step up.
And step up they do! To the direst, funniest, most improbable situations that might be found on a dilapidated paddle steamer plying the 1890 Numchuck River, calling on such colorful ports as Salvation, Patience, Plenty, Woodpile, Blowville, and Boats-a-Cummin.
The Glorious Adventure of the Sunshine Queen is not for the reluctant reader; the reader who struggles with contextual clues. Rather, it is for the reader who glories in wordplay, colorful language, and magnificent adventures. Ms. McCaughrean does not stop to ensure that the reader has "gotten," the joke (and there are many!), she keeps on moving, toward greater exploits downriver. Get ready to be swept away from Salvation to Golden Bend on an exuberant trip with the Bright Lights!
Highly recommended.
The Glorious Advent
