Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Measure of Great Men

Contributed by Jeanne Murphy, President of Westport Center for the Arts

 

Westport Center for the Arts debuted “Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass:  The Measure of Great Men” on June 26 at the Alexander Majors House in Kansas City, Missouri.  The discussions and planning started in late 2009 and the people WCA first approached for support were skeptical.

 For some reason we kept having to explain it:  Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass share their stories with a live audience.  Both were considered great public speakers and their written words fill libraries.   The language is so rich and the personal stories so American.  It seemed natural. 

 No, we explained, not a reenactment of the Lincoln-Douglas debates; the other Douglass, with two S’s. He escaped slavery and became famous as an abolitionist speaker and author of My Bondage and My Freedom.   

These explanations were not necessary when Westport Center for the Arts approached the Missouri Humanities Council and The Alexander Majors Historic House and Museum with Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Measure of Great Men.  Partnering with MHC and Alexander Majors House made the project blossom in ways we had not considered possible.  Funding from the Missouri Humanities Council helped with the costs of research and script development, securing first-rate actors and raising our young organization’s visibility with posters and signage both at Kansas City businesses and at the site.   One of the most visible antebellum houses in Kansas City was the home of the founder of the Pony Express, Alexander Majors.  When we approached Kandice Walker, director of the Alexander Majors House, about using the barn for the performance, the response was immediately welcoming.  The dedicated volunteer group helped with seating, parking and the after-show reception.  In addition, she generously posted the event on their email list of avid history buffs.  We had the audience we were looking for.

 Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Measure of Great Men started out as a one-person adaptation of My Bondage and My Freedom.  Amanda Burkhart, who did the research and adaptation of the script, was a student at UMKC in a class taught by Dr. Pellom McDaniels.  Discussions and readings from the class brought Lincoln into the story. Dr. McDaniels helped identify some key parallels in their early lives putting them on intersecting paths.  Lincoln and Douglass both provided plenty of primary source material.  What they did not provide was a single, preexisting text to adapt. 

 At that point, it became very important to all that the actual words of Lincoln and Douglass be used. But President Lincoln and Frederick Douglass talked only three times in their lives, in the late days of the Civil War.  Two private meetings were held in the White House, and the accounts of them are from Douglass only.  The third, and last, meeting was a brief exchange at Lincoln’s second inaugural reception.   Though Douglass wrote many letters to Lincoln, the research did not reveal any letters written in return.  A historic reenactment of those conversations was not possible; a dramatic interpretation of what that conversations would have been seemed wrong.   By using passages from each man’s autobiography at the start, we learn firsthand about the experiences that formed them.  Their public statements on slavery, the preserving of the United States and the politics and inevitability of emancipation play off each other, leading to the meetings that united them in a cause.  Ms. Burkhart said she felt the two men “looking over her shoulder.”

 Kansas City actors Walter Coppage read the words of Douglass and Robert Gibby Brand read the words of Lincoln on June 26 in the barn at the Alexander Majors House to a standing-room-only audience.  To fill out the evening, storyteller Molly Postlewaite presented her one-woman show The Lamp of Freedom and members of the Shortleaf Band Tenley Hansen and Michael Fraser provided wonderful period music in costume.

 On September 30, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Measure of Great Men will be performed at the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library.  Additional performances are planned at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas and Longview Community College in Lee Summit, Missouri, as well as the Mount Gilead Historic Church in Kearney, Missouri. Visit our website to learn more about Westport Center for the Arts and our ongoing activities and upcoming events at http://westportcenterforthearts.org/. 

 Thanks to the support of the Missouri Humanities Council, the hospitality of the Alexander Majors Historic House and Museum and research and imagination of a creative team from Westport Center for the Arts Lincoln and Douglass shared their stories and ideas with us in their own words.

A Readers Theatre Westport Center for the Arts – June 26, 2011 at Alexander Majors Historic House Museum

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