The Ballad of Emmett Till

Ifa Bayeza, April 2008

A month after his fourteenth birthday, a confident Chicago youth, a boy on the threshold of manhood, embarks on a summer trip to Mississippi. His saga changes the course of a nation . . . but what of his own journey?

The story of a quest . . . the pursuit of happiness, of liberty . . . and . . . life!

If a miracle worker [the principal Egungun dancer] dances well, the drummers may change to irregular rhythms known as ego. Ordinarily, the drummers emulate the pitch patterns and rhythms of spoken Yoruba, enabling the drums to speak proverbs and aphorisms. But in the irregular rhythms of ego, phrases are divided and subdivided, and words are repeated so that the lead drum is often referred to as the stutterer.

—Margaret Thompson Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency

. . . though he lay down [to sleep], the dream did not come. . . he loved life.

—Gilgamesh

From the first it had been like a Ballad.

—Gwendolyn Brooks

Foreword

The Ballad of Emmett Till is based on the 1955 Mississippi murder of Chicago black youth Emmett Till for whistling at a white woman. His mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral is believed by many to mark the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement. This work is a contemporary telling of Emmett's story, a jazz integration of past and present, the events as seen from the perspective of the youth himself. It is the story of Emmett's quest, his pursuit of happiness, of liberty, and ultimately of life.

The work began as a drama. There have been two principal versions. The 2008 world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago had a cast of twelve and four movements, spanning the epic saga from Emmett's journey south through the trial of his killers. In 2010, to suit the more intimate stage at Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles, I adjusted the play's scope and reduced the cast to five. The West Coast premiere created a more elemental and personal story, distilling the work to Emmett's journey. It is this more intimate portrait that I present now.

I see blues and jazz. It's laughter and sorrow. I hear the music.It could just be a poem by itself.

—Ruby Dee

The venerate actor, writer, and activist Ruby Dee and I are both founding board members of the SonEdna Foundation in Mississippi. During the very first board retreat, Miss Dee was kind enough to read an early manuscript. Her generous comment allowed me to consider the work's poetic qualities and the possibility of presenting The Ballad of Emmett Till as poetic narrative, flowing from soliloquy to duet to chorale, from doo-wop to blues, from work song to spiritual, from day to dream.

Designed as a fast-paced series of personal and first-person accounts of the Emmett Till saga, the narrative is conveyed through speech, the poetry of spoken words interlaced with song. I have used the historic motif seen in enduring folk stories and legends as the basis of the narrative structure. My brother Paul has likened it to reading the tale of John Henry. Just as that classic story, through the African American lens, describes the coming of the Industrial Age, The Ballad of Emmett Till, likewise, is a modern folk story, a major myth concerning the birth of our modern nation.

Homage to two other ballads: Gwendolyn Brooks's "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon" and Bob Dylan's "The Death of Emmett Till." I see my work as a continuing theme and variation, the telling in a new way. This ballad is Emmett's, his song. As a child of the Civil Rights Movement, I wanted to create a work that spoke of and to the child—the adolescent peering through the window at adulthood, wondering what it feels like, trying things on. I not only wanted to speak to the essence of the youth-driven movement that would emerge from this tragedy, but also to the concept of youth as the agency of social change...