Schoolteacher’s Play Says More Than ‘We Shall Overcome’

At most elementary schools, Black History Month went something like this: Post pictures of Martin Luther King Jr., display books by black authors and spend a few days talking about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.

But at 93rd Street Elementary School in South Los Angeles, 5th-grade teacher Kristen Johnson did quite a bit more last month.

Johnson, a history buff, wrote an original play that wove together elements of global black cultures, including American blues music, Australian aborigines and Brazilian dance and martial arts. The 45-minute play dramatized a trial--NAACP vs. State of California--concerning allegations that African history had been wrongfully left out of a state-issued textbook.

In three February performances, nearly 70 students danced, played music and filled roles from Nefertiti to Carlos Santana.

The play also set the stage for students ages 7 to 12 to absorb sophisticated lessons about the worldwide influence of black people, lessons rarely included in grade school lesson plans.

“The minute they said you have [to organize a play for] African American history month, I said this isn’t going to be a typical play,” Johnson said. “I’m not doing this Mickey Mouse, ‘We Shall Overcome’ stuff--the same old thing. I teach that every year in class anyway. This was an opportunity to do more.”

Johnson, who has been teaching for eight years, embodies the yearning among many African Americans to focus black history discussions on more than summaries of slavery and the civil rights movement. In her view, textbooks routinely omit detailed black history, so she has long supplemented those books with her own research, she said. After years of frustration, she wrote the play, “African History: The Missing Pages of World History.”

“I’m the one teacher who doesn’t teach Martin Luther King,” she said. “They get it in first, second, third grade. But have any of [them] ever heard of Malcolm X and Medgar Evers?”

When, a few years ago, a student asked her detailed questions about a poster on her wall that highlighted factoids of global black history, Johnson realized she had more to learn herself. Using books, magazines and the Internet, she researched such topics as prominent Egyptian intellectuals, the African roots of Latin salsa music and 9th century Spanish leaders of African descent--all material she would include in the play.

“Most of this stuff was new to me,” she said. “I told them it’s important to know your history, because the media will portray you one way, but if you know your history, your people, your skills--that’s empowering.”

Johnson’s play was one of several live performances staged at 93rd Street School this year, said Principal Marcella M. Keyes. The school pushes students to do oral and performance projects such as speeches and book reports, and they regularly produce small plays for Hanukkah, Christmas and other holidays, school officials said.

But, among those performances, “African History” stands out, Keyes said. The play was “unique in the content of the program. It was deeper than usual--much more sophisticated,” she said.

Johnson and several teachers held auditions among second-, third- and fifth-graders starting in November and held rehearsals daily in January. All cast members were required to have memorized their lines six weeks before the three performances. All the students wrote essays about how they could get into character.

“I could see them thinking about what it would take to be like someone from Egypt,” Johnson said.

Said Shawn Ingram, who does African-themed storytelling for children and was one of the play’s directors, “Children are more eager to want to read and write [when they are in a play]. They read and memorize this play--and you trick them into reading history.”

On the day of the performances, Jeff Turner, an assistant teacher, tapped on African drums as students filled the school auditorium. The drum and a flute also were played to segue between witnesses taking the stand in the play.

The play’s dramatic tension began with National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People lawyers demanding that history textbooks tell the truth “and nothing but the complete truth.” To prove their case, they would call 13 witnesses, including Nefertiti, queen of Egypt; Russian novelist Aleksandr Pushkin, who was of African descent; and a 19th century African American who testified that blacks invented the refrigerator, the comb and the lawn mower.

In response, defense attorneys scrambled in mock embarrassment to organize cross-examinations.

The production included authentic costumes for such characters as an Egyptian queen and the judge, lawyers and bailiffs.

As characters testified about their roles in African history, other actors silently acted out that same testimony on a stage in the background, often to comic effect.

The costumes were makeshift--white bedsheets for Africans and a rusty utility cart carrying a squatting Buddha. Some students mumbled their lines. Others slipped out of character and corrected one another onstage or broke down laughing. After one performance, Johnson coached the cast: “Walk tall when you enter. You’re proud! Your people have museums named in your honor.”

And it was unclear how much in-depth history the students in the audience, as young as 6, absorbed. Many giggled, and some minds wandered during the performances.

But, in the end, the judge found for the plaintiffs because of overwhelming evidence of ignored black history, and the cast danced onstage in celebration. At least for those in the play, the production gave students the inspiration to delve into African history--and to learn to view their textbooks with a critical eye.

“The social studies book doesn’t have everything in it about black people,” said O.B. Grigsby, 10, whose character Tang was a ruler of African descent in ancient China. “The people that wrote the book didn’t know about other people.”

Days after the performances, during the cast party, students watched a video of the play, drank punch and reveled in their work, still reciting their lines. Some talked about someday traveling to the distant lands they had studied for the play.

Others figured the lessons would have a more immediate benefit.

“It’s important to know these things,” said Ramon Castanon, 11, who played a Spanish ruler of Moroccan descent named Abdur Rahman. “It’s going to help us in middle school.”