Voices from black history continue to cry out for freedom.

Crispus Attucks, a young black man, was the first to die in the Boston Massacre of 1770--a bloody prelude to the American Revolution that followed a few years later.

But did you know that Attucks has a great-great-great-grandson living today? Yes, and he’s a hothead of a kid--a revolutionary who dresses like Huey Newton, stockpiles weapons and bombs and says the revolution that claimed the life of his 18th-Century ancestor is not over.

Black people, he harangues (the kid’s words go beyond rhetoric), are still oppressed. “Where do I begin?” he asks of the three stern judges who accuse him of treason. “Who has been brought to trail for the castrations, the lynchings and the beatings?”

Strong stuff from a heady play by local writer Vel Syed, in which the historic Attucks returns to defend his progeny--the relationship, by the way, is fictional. One of Attucks’ arguments is that he died so that all people in America could be free and that promise is unfulfilled.

Director Marvin Clayton knows that the 40-minute play exudes the militancy of the 1960s, but he argues that it timely because change has been slow.

“It seems we are still struggling for liberation,” he said. “And it’s more than blacks. There are the homeless, who are slaves to the system. Political change is the answer, like Jesse Jackson for vice president.”

“Crispus Attucks Today,” as the play is called, is part of a double bill that the Carson Players present as part of Black History Month tonight and Saturday at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

For the rest of the evening, performers will portray black historic or literary figures in monologues, among them Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson.

“Education and entertainment is our total theme,” said Clayton. “We want to educate our audience as to what black history is all about.”

Although most members of the group are community residents, the company does have a guest star in Khalilah Ali, the former wife of boxing great Muhammed Ali, who plays one of the bewigged judges who condemns young Attucks as an enemy of the establishment.

Ali--who describes herself as an actress, karate expert and motivational speaker encouraging black youth to excel--said she likes the part because she gets “to be a villain.” Ali said this is a good change of pace because she usually plays “modest mother types.”

Clayton said he started the Carson Players in 1974 as a way to combat gangs. In the early years, gang members were the performers, but the group later evolved into a community theater and dance troupe that performs at the college and at the Carson Community Center.

While some members of the Carson Players have professional experience and ambitions, Clayton said, most perform for their own enjoyment. “I’m real proud of them,” he said.

One player is Virgie Seymore, who acts out “The Negro Woman,” a narrative poem by Langston Hughes.

“It’s about the struggle for freedom by black people,” she said of the poem. “Through struggle, things have changed, but there is still a long way to go.”

Seymore said the poem has particular meaning to her because she participated in sit-ins at segregated Southern lunch counters in the 1960s. “Now,” she said, “I’m free to go anywhere I want to.”

Another performer in the company is Ella Nelson, who, through costuming, makeup and words, transforms herself into Mary McLeod Bethune, who was born one of 17 children of a South Carolina sharecropper and went on to become an educator, civil rights leader and one of the most influential women in America in the two decades prior to her death in 1955.

Nelson said she put the character together out of Bethune’s life and words, to which she was first exposed in the 1930s.

It was Bethune’s creed that most attracted Nelson, and she uses it at the end of her portrayal: “I leave you love--share it. Hate destroys, love builds. Never judge a man by the color of his skin, but by the hand he extends. Thirst for knowledge. Cherish my dreams. Take care of them and they will grow.”