===== CONTENTS: (i) License (ii) Quick Note (iii) Characters PATTERSON VS REED (All Scenes 1-8) (iv) Historical Notes and Liberties ===== (i) License This play (without significant alterations to the original text) can be noncommercially produced by anyone, anywhere, and distributed in any medium without further permission from or obligation to the author P. Aaron Mitchell than that this entire License section be presented to the audience (in a manner easily intelligible according to the medium). This play (without significant alterations to the original text) can be commercially produced by anyone, anywhere, and distributed in any medium without further permission from or obligation to the author P. Aaron Mitchell than the following: (i) this entire License section must be presented to the audience (in a manner easily intelligible according to the medium); (ii) for each person involved in the production, a "copy" of the play must be newly purchased from paaronmitchell.com (or through approved channel); (iii) on your honor, if the gross revenue of the production exceeds 1 million USD, then 1% of the total gross revenue will be paid to P. Aaron Mitchell as royalty in a timely manner. If you enjoy this play, consider buying a copy of the original text, complete with the author's historical notes, to read at your own leisure, from paaronmitchell.com. ===== (ii) Quick Note If a writer begins with "how to read" something, you should generally run - but maybe this is an exception. This play is meant for internet video. Each scene is quite short, no more than a few minutes at most. The line-breaks are in place to help the actors find the internal music of the dialogue. In the same way, you will likely enjoy it more if you read aloud - but, while reading, simply ignore the line-breaks, reading from punctuation to punctuation as you normally would, and let the rhyme and rhythm of the language emerge. ===== (iii) Characters FLOYD MANN, Director of Alabama Department of Public Safety JOHN PATTERSON, Governor of Alabama GEORGE WALLACE, politician JOE REED, student at Alabama State College DR LAWRENCE REDDICK, professor at Alabama State College POLICE OFFICER PROTESTERS, non-speaking ===== PATTERSON VS REED ===== 1. (Alabama governor's office.) P - Patterson, M - Mann (to enter) ----- M (entering): He's got'em hot and rotten about the boycottin', says we should a shot'em all when they left the cotton plantations. The man's a danger to the nation, I swear. Isn't that just how Hitler got to be started over there? gettin' the angry entitled riled and ridin' it to the end of democracy and the broken glass nights? P: Who now? What? M: Wallace and his whites, out there at the sit-ins spittin' and kickin' like the trash they are and pickin' fights with the blacks who just sit there simpl- y keeping their temper and don't fight back - so tell me, who's really a Southern Gentleman when you look at that? P: You're sermonizing clergy. But I heard he's got half of dixie for 63, so we can only hope and see. Still, if a man like Wallace gets in power then all the S- outh's hour of loathing is begun - if not already - he's one for only goading and getting what he wants and loading poor white minds with the supposed taunts and crimes of their black neighbors. M: And you say the same things he does! P: I say what I must to get the votes. And you'll note that I trammel things in law and time and clamor that catharts the angry minds and hearts of the mob away from true violence. I give them a tea kettle whistling so they don't notice the silence of the fire fizzling out underneath, and by the time they do the pressure's released. But Wallace would stopper it and fire it and prop it up with the vilest goading of wounded Southern ego until each white man was exploding at each Negro like a blind landmine, so long as he - Wallace - could sit where I'm sitting or where Kennedy's getting so comfortable. M: You say it like Kennedy's the one to trouble us. But Wallace is monstrous. P: But that's only his mouth. You see, a Wallace needs a Kennedy because without an enemy all his s- capegoating goes floating away timidly into the dark forgotten past. He's a little dog barking full blast to get the bigger dogs riled but if Kennedy would just go past and smile and let Alabama alone a while then men like Wallace would do us all a f- avor and wear themselves out and realize at last there's only dead air about them listening now to their attacks. M: Tell that to the blacks. P: Ugh. Sometimes I think if I had any real spine I'd go and drink with them in the dine- rs and line up beside' em and I'd spit on this fix of a mess called Alabama politcs and I'd go make the best of myself somewhere else. M: Maybe you should. P: Maybe I should, Mann, but can you understand? They set fire to my father's law office and then when they saw this only toughened his resolve against them they shot him in the street like a dog without a single instance of warning - a born easy gentleman, a veteran whose middle name was Love - they killed him and called themselves tough, and went around bragging rough- ly in their ranks that now it made them the real gangs- ters and thugs of the South. And they were. Sure. Undoubtedly, they turned parts of Alabama into hell on Ear- th and routed the decent people from their homes until we, the politicians, drove them out of these parts to leave folks alone. They killed my father, Mann, and I'll be damned if I let them scheme behind the scenes of Civil Rights like a smokescreen to get even a toe-hold here again. I say any one of those thugs who comes near here will bleed. M: I say you may be damned, indeed. ===== ===== 2. (Alabama governor's office.) P - Patterson, M - Mann, W - Wallace (to enter) ----- W (entering): Good day, gentlemen. How's our simple and hallowed temple of the South - our Alabama - so proud and true that I'm honored I am a- mong the few who still take her sacred purview of racial propriety as bedrock of all my piety. M: Mr Wallace, sir, do you have business here? W: Well, that I fear depends on if we're friends with clear intent- ions for the fate of our great State. I must confess that late- ly I grow less believing, less convinced, that our governor's not a race-trait- or deceiving us for political ends. I dare to guess that almost every inst- ance of his public elocution is meant for diffusion of racial tens- ion, through high heady words but too little action. In fact if I have heard right, in a recent transaction with our nigger-loving president - and her husband - when Kennedy said to him, "Make sure a bus full of uppity-actin' Northerners make Jackson safely," our governor instead of facing up to that pompous Jack and Jacqueline and tacklin' their rude imposition with fire and brimstone had his assistant say on- ly he was off playing golf. Now that tea's too sweet even for me. So, again I nee- d to ask if we are friends? P: Mr Wallace, we are most certainly not friends. And if you have no business then this is neither an auspicious nor fortuitious time for the two of us to talk. It's such a nice day, sir - why not go for a walk? W: What, does a white man have no right then to bring his governor a piece of frightenin' news from the county courthouse just a few blocks over and south from here? We got nine niggers sittin' down in clear- ly segregated sections and now the police are arrestin' em and pressin' em into hold- in' cells below the buildin'. P: Mann! M (exiting): On it sir! P (shouting after him): And tell those officers they shall not turn a single inch of black skin blue! And keep the names a secret too! Do not tell the press! W: Well now, less and less... like I said, our governor instead of protecting our blessed traditions is privately a spinelessly bending man of submission. But I was righteously prepared for your your shame - I already got the names. P: You what? W: That's why I came with a friendly warnin' all the names' ll be in every paper in the mornin'. Freedom of the press ain't no sin. P: Wallace, you realize you just killed nine men? W: Now, I ain't pull no trigger and I ain't tell no nigger to go sit in no chair or counter-front where he ain't want- ed. But you're askin' do I care, well, I'll be hon- est. They could lynch'em at the Lincoln Mon -ument. They could lynch'em at the Ritz. Won't bother me an inch I'll be yawnin, forgotten it. 'f I was right there watchin' it I wouldn't even itch. P (exiting): You sonofa- ===== ===== 3. (Holding cell under the county courthouse.) R - Reed, O - Police Officer (to enter), S - other protesters with Reed, non-speaking ----- R: My God, I've never been so frightened. I'm tightened to my toes and fingertips and my mind goes white as lightning and I can feel my lips crawling and biting with an ache to just start bawling on the floor and writhing and begging for my life. I'm made of electric wires and knife- edges and fires and I fear I might babble mys a liar s- o long as I might stay alive. O God, I am a coward! I've no power, d- oughtiness or striv- ing hope within me for this hour of my trials and I'm sure that I will shame myself. O God, what help is there for me in You! What can You do? I've heard it all too many times, the crimes and killing, and lawcourts willing such dark affairs as black men's blood spilling down their stairs so that recourse, prayers, hopes - are lynched with bodies by the ropes in white men's hands. I can barely stand! And what good are plans and courage anyways? Does one with them flourish, or see any better days than others? Is not plain luck the surest mother and ruler of every minute? no matter what says the jurist, the tyrant, the preacher of the Infinite? No matter how you spin it everything is chance, and bravery and knavery and gritting it out and quitting in doubt and sitting about and even my driveling loud self-pitying bout here behind my bars are all the same to circumstance, to happenstance, to fate, to what happens and how the future is no mate to now nor to anything that man can do but simply a cloud come into view for us to cast our proud and self-deceiving shapes into. It doesn't tru- ly matter if I drop down on my knees and beg and flatter and kiss the guard's shoe and grab his leg and babble, "Please, just let me go!" except that he might show me mercy and throw me into the street before anyone hurts me or lynches me. I might live for a century, and just living is no small thing. But what would I be then? Who would be me then? What would I see when I looked in the mirr- or and what would I hear when someone said freedom? When my children were three and and I started to see in their eyes these spirit-eating lies of race take hold then what word of grace could I even unfold for them to believe in - I'd be dead and cold while my heart was still beating. So I'm sure I'm deceived when I say that it matters but I say that it matters. And I'll likely be just one more battered black body forgotten and rotting in some tattered back alley in the morning and there'll be no heaven for me either because such pleasant things aren't true, but still I've got to see this through. I've just got to. I don't even know why anymore but I do. I realize today th- at I'm not much of a man and I've never been so afraid but here I am. I only wish the wait- ing done, that the next footsteps would come to kill me or let me go. O (entering): You boys up! Show a little dignity! On your feet!
The governor's here to meet you and if you make me look bad I'll beat you like a fish againt a stone! I'll make ya hurt! Tuck in your shirt and keep your backbones straight! You, there, quit your chatterin'. They're all yours, Governor Patterson. ===== ===== 4. (Holding cell under the county courthouse.) P - Patterson (to enter), R - Reed, O - Police Officer, non-speaking (to exit), S - other protesters with Reed, non-speaking ----- P (entering as police officer exits): Well, here I see nine impatient school boys who want to rage and make noise and occasion bois- terous confrontation by ploys requiring neither agenc- y nor discipline nor mettle nor valor, their intents and purposes in these instances but to nettle fools who take pride in a kind of pallor, but unaware that their own pensive powers now atrophy by stooping down to pageantry and dumb low show instead of humbly hoe- ing the certain row of their ow- n dear manhood and future. Now tell me does this suit you? to squabble with rabble and saddle yourself at best with wasted time or worse by battling these adders to come out blind or hurt or dead, when with your mind and effort instead you might have actually come through? I know it's less drama but it's true that when you're fighting Rommel - which I attest is a lo- sing fight - the best you can do is sit tight and let him get himself gassed and killed 'cause that's by nature what he does if you just hold still. And these bast- ards are half the man he was so they'll go much fast- er. Now three of you are from out of state which you'll hate to hear actually presents us with some decent stuff for escap- ing these policemen's rough and hasty holding cell, and not just that but Alabama's black and specious chauv- inistic hell of prejudice as well, if you can swallow your pride with some intell- igence. Now I'm spell- in' out sense, so listen. We'll say you come with loose uppity ways from the northern place- s where you were raise- d and you confused your barely race- aware young friends but by the grace of Alabama you'd make amends, that you've talked to the governor, that for your sins you'll all take the summer to work in the community, that you seek not impunity but redemp- tion and another chance. I know it's degrading but white men love a black man propitiating them with his hat in his hands. And waiting is part of war and so are good plans. So, if you're not just placating your own young egos then play ingratiating negroes outwardly while you quietly make your footing firm. Let this incident go fading into time and then start back to school next term. R: You want us to apologize? P: With downcast eyes and many quiet but audible sighs of penitence. R: And then what modicum of difference will we have made for black ci- tizens - who pay taxe- s, who enlist and fight, who are debtors and workers and creditors - P: Save your rhetoric for a better setting than your prison and ostracism. You're forgetting that I'm a veteran of much verbal pugilism and I see where you'd go. Here's all that you have to know. One, if you stick by what you've done you run a high risk of throw- ing your young lives away for nothing. Two, if you do what I've told you to and suffer the slow inglorious process of work and time, you'll come through fine and alive and you'll find that by surviv- ing you can accomplish much more than a corpse. R: I speak only for myself of course. But I'll go to hell b- efore I apologize. For in my eyes, and in our country's prize- d Declaration of Independence the unhealth- y arrogance of oppressors must be cast away; it is sin. I'm proud of what I did today and if you let me out I'll do it again. P: And this goes for all of you? Not one of you can grasp what I'm trying to convey? Not one of you has anything else to say?
Fine. Then remember if you end up dying that you wanted it this way. ===== ===== 5. (Alabama governor's office.) P - Patterson, M - Mann (they enter together at start of scene, exit together at end) ----- P: What a bunch of dunces!
Dying over where they eat their lunches! Sitting there while punches are thrown!
As if once this is all blown over and accomplished even one will say he actually wants to sit with those pompous presumptuous dysfunction- al scumbags! But still these young black s- oldiers for their cause do not pause and once ask if there is no better way, or if their loss- es today are worth a little more patience, as if their lives were only playthings to toss away blind in mistaken attempts to change idiots' minds. And I'm stuck here tryin' to keep both sets of bastards from causing disaster in Alabama. Did you get each man a car? M: Yes, each is out with no char -ges, only a war- ning against disturbing the peace. P: Out with a uniform? M: Yes, release- d in custody of a trusted officer with mostly norm- al human morals if still racist, but responsible enough to get them all safe and s- ecure to their residences. P: And what about tomorrow? I told you Wallace said he sent their names out for the papers to print them. M: Well, unless you have more of a talent for tyranny and rape of the Constitution than Wallace, your only solace in this instance is that there's nine. So, it's possible angry whites will find it more political than personal and set it out of mind. We can't stop the press and we can't outguess every minute of the day to keep those black boys safe. P: So, we're trusting fate? M: I'll do my best but there's only so many place- s I can be and only so many faith- ful officers that we can rely on to do more good than bad while keeping their eyes on blacks who have become a target. P: Maybe that's the smartest way to think of it. What you said was farthest from my thoughts but now that you speak of it it's what's exactly needed - a singular target that we can keep in safe proximity while drawing white anger away from those blacks who acted so indiscriminately today. M: A distraction? P: And more than nine black men what does a white racist abhor? What makes him roar and madly expectorate and score his conscience on his sad pathetic hate like nothing else? It's a black man with more than himself. It's a black man with a belt, with shoes and a hat, a black man that holds a good job and a degree, a black man whom he can see has surpassed him. Just ask him and listen between whatever he regurgitates about how noble Robert E Lee was - what a white racist hates is a black man who makes more money than he does. You make sure those boys got home safe, and check on Wallace. I'm going to Alabama State College. ===== ===== 6. (Dr Reddick's office, Alabama State College.) D - Dr Reddick, R - Reed, P - Patterson (to enter), M - Mann (to enter) ----- R: I was so afraid and I prayed but felt no comfort nor relief, and my hands stayed shaking underneath my pockets, and I felt like my eye-sockets could not keep my eyes inside my head. I don't think I am read- y for all this in spite of what I said to the governor today. D: What did you say? R: I told him I was proud of what I'd done and that if he let me out I'd run the same risk once more to force justice to Alabama's door. D: And is that still what you'll do? R: If I have to then, yes. Tru- ly I'm willing to put myself forward even if it comes to them beating or killing me for what I believe. But my heart is eating me because I know I deceive you and everyone else when I stand there calm and brave; inside myself I am terribly afraid, I have no faith, and every second I only want to get away. D: And you feel guilty for wanting to live and not be hurt or killed? But you still keep yourself there by force of will? Do you think that if you felt brave your actions would be more real? Do you think that every one of us doesn't hope we somehow save ourselves from the ominous chill of the lyncher's cold hands? Do you think that I or Reverend King are any more of a man than you, or that we don't understand or don't feel the same thing too? It's because we do that our actions have power. It's because we risk much - we risk the only thing that's truly ours - our lives, that by such sacrifice we hope to touch the cauterized hearts of our oppressors and return them to flesh and feeling. It's by - P (entering): Ah, Dr Reddick, dealing with a student? I can wait - or hold up, you then are the imprudent young boy from the holding cell this morning who couldn't tell his toes from his ears with fright but still wouldn't listen to warning or right or reason. D: Governor Patterson, this is Joe Reed in my history class. He's in need of counsel so may I ask - P: Ordinarily I'd say yes and yield the office, but in this case there's a lesson for this boy's profit s- o no, I will not wait or deal or go. I will say what I've come to say. Here is what you've accomplished, Joe Reed, young and lawless, since you had to have your way; Dr Reddick, you are dismissed from Alabama State College, effective today. D: What! R: You can't do that! P: By virtue of my office I can and I do. And what's more you were the leader and corruptor of the twenty-nine blacks with Joe Reed up in the courthouse earlier. R: That's a lie! dirtier and lower than all your unworthy per- fidious campaign ora- tory! There were only nine of us!
And he wasn't there! He met us in the morning and left! P: But I don't care. And my story will be in the next printed newspaper with a photo of Dr Reddick standing where your eight compatri- ots dally beside him outside the courthouse entrance. And when people read twenty-nine then they'll forget all about the rest and f- ocus on him since he's older and successful and educated. And that's a recipe for making a black man hated. But he's smarter than you and has worked harder than you and so he'll pardon himself to leave Alabama and bide his time without feeling like he's committed a crime of cowardice but rather with true wisdom of mind knowing that when you are powerless you had best wait and withdraw. And all that raw white Alabama hate that shifts to him from you tomorrow will fizzle and fade and fall from memory with no horror of violence. And for him it'll be only a hard but recoverable check to his career. So you see I sacrifice one good man's job right here to save nine young lives. And that's politics for you, that's being wise, that's Paul keeping toward the prize; you let the little snake bite you while you pluck out the bigger one's eyes and then strangle it, and you hope some Good Power will give you the might to fight through this one this hour and still have enough righteous anger in you to pull the little one's fangs out of yourself after and kill that bastard too. But either way you know you can only do your part, right now, with trust in your own heart with perhaps not even an ou- nce of glory or acknowledgement but knowing, for e- xample, in this instance that some young men's moms can spend another holiday with them. That's what it means to be a man - when it stings, and you're damned, and you know you'll never get your own word in, but still you do everything you can to accomplish what good has become your burden. M (rushing in): Governor! P: It's too late! He's already fired! He's forced out! M: No! Forget about the courthouse! It's a footnote now! That bus that came dow- n from Washington that we had our secret investigator watching on and sitting in the first seat was attacked in the heat of Anniston and Birmingham by a mob rushing out into the street with pipes and wires and bombs and they cut the tires and burned the whole damn bus and beat stripes into those who tumbled out coughing - if not for our man there they'd be already in their coffins and some are in such critical condition they may end up dead anyways before morning. What I mean is while you were on your self-appointed mission to silent- ly save these students here we've had the worst outbreak of racial violen- ce in ten years. Picture a bus turned into a bonfire, asphalt like napalm in flames, women shrieking and engines screeching gone haywire and fifty bodies mangled dangling bloody everywhere across the highway lanes. ===== ===== 7. (Dr Reddick's office, Alabama State College.) D - Dr Reddick, non-speaking, R - Reed, P - Patterson, M - Mann ----- P: A burning bus? A riotous, murderous mob beating people unto the quietus of death in Alabama streets? My God, please, are you serious? Or am I so delirious with anger at the stupidity of these reckless nine men that I've become a stranger to my own nightmares and do not recognize when I am dreaming? Is the phone on Dr Reddick's desk ringing? M: I'll bet that's President Kennedy bringing the wrath of Capitol statecraft into this catastrophe. His secretary's been aft- er you half the day, asking me how to get you on the line, and I told them eventually they'd find you somewhere here, though it wasn't clear to me exactly which office or for what end - though from what you said when I came in now I think I can guess. Nevertheless, we have a bigger mess to fix now than this morning and no time to spend any more on the courthouse arrests. P: People burning buses in the road? People being beaten with pipes and towed at their heels by friends and foes alike towards safety or more violence, respectively, is that what you said to me? M: Governor, I've always known you to be a man of action and resolve, and to come through when your backs a- gainst the wall, so I don't like the look of you now so low. Buck up and tell me what's happenin' in Alabama and how we can get it back under control. P: Brutalizing people in the streets in Anniston and Birmingham, but that's just like Phenix City back again when my father first took up the man- tle of trying to rout the crooked crime rings out of that place - now violence and lawlessness careers across the face of Alabama in spite of all I've done to keep it at bay. You work ten years and look up and you're further back than the day you started - M: Governor, I beg your pardon, but we have to get on this. P: But honest- ly what difference does it make? For my country and State I've fought in two wars on three landmasses and in my tenure as governor I've put through more law for public advantages and protections endur- ing to both white and black than these random hap- hazard civil rights theat- rics will yet accomplish for a great d- eal of time. And yet by my politics I've made myself accomplice to these crimes today. When people look back on me they'll say I was a racist segregationist, full of hatred like every other snake in the South. I'll be bile in their mouths. Forget about the fact that I didn't ask for this job, that my father was murdered by the mob in the back of an alley in Phenix City, in the black close night because he had sallie- d forth as a lone voice of right- eous anger threatening to bring them down, nominated as Attorney General. When they put him in the ground what could I do but take up his position and bring those criminals to their perdition? What could I do but once started into it strive for their swift and permanent removal not only from Phenix City but all Alabama? Or should I have left some place for another young man to find his father face- down in a pool of blood in a space in a parking lot, shot dead by some thug or loan-shark or rot- ten policeman? So, how could I proceed then? All my work would have been extinguished if I had not become governor after so I could cast my fired sense of justice deep in- to every aspect of our courts and commerce and State - and I did; if you took the lid off the whole country and examined each place for graft and corruption and public waste you'd find Alabama scoured cleaner and leaner and more productive than any other. But all that is nothin' to the race rhetoric. When I became governor I had to say what I did or lose - simple as that. And it's no excuse but again I ask what else could I do? just wipe my hands and walk away from the few s- quare feet of land that used to be my father? Forget about all that I've done, all the roads and schools and the docks cleaned up and Phenix City brought under rule and all organized crime subdued and bad cops locked up and the courts given their legal and civic tools - forget it all because I'm that fool beside the picture of the burning bus, the bloody bodies, the violence still oozing like pus out of my wounded life for all I've tried to heal. M: Governor, stop your whining and deal with the problem at hand. Nobody promised you'd be much of a man, and you know from the rawness of war that nobody's honest- ly remembered for what they do or don't do. Your reputation is a crapshoot in the mouths of fugacious future grass-roots that for a while can walk and talk and sin until they're scattered by the wind, but your character's something else. Kennedy's secretary said the President wants you to humble yourself and get the help of a young black student leader, a boy by the name of Joe Reed, if you can find him. R: That's me. That's who I am. ===== ===== 8. (Dr Reddick's office, Alabama State College.) D - Dr Reddick, non-speaking, R - Reed, P - Patterson, M - Mann ----- P: Yeah, well I don't give a damn who Kennedy wants me to meet with! And I don't give a damn who Joe Reed is! And it makes me sick to my stomach as a man that right now, while my State is bleeding and what she needs is someone to carry her off the field, Kennedy's playing politics tryin' to feel out if he can polish this into a shin- y headline about how we couldn't deal with our own problems and yield- ed to our inherent immodest need for Northern succor. You can tell that motherf - You can tell him he'd still be sellin' his vote in the Senate if I hadn't taken it into my own hands to peddle his meddle- some traitorous name across the South. You tell him I put him in the White House and in a couple years I'll take him out! Did anyone die here last year? Was anyone beaten? We've had racial peace in Alabama even since the ruling in Topeka, and we're progressing slowly but surely - we got the Montgomery buses integrated - but these agitators come down fooling themselves with self-righteousness. Instead of waiting for the opportune time to get justice achieved, they deceive themselves with self-importance and only seek their own misfortune. But when I try to relieve them and protect them from stupidity and tell them to work this through in the courtroom they only tsk at me and say that I'm a redneck and disrespect me. Well, what were they expecting? Doesn't a thrush know its own swamp? Didn't I cry out a warning? Does a rabbit come from its den in the morning to the riverbanks and hope not to get chomped where gators are swarming in ranks? And now I'll bet Kennedy comes pomp- ously telling me to get out my tanks and planes and National Guardsmen to protect some insane idiots who want to pretend this swamp is a garden - this is Alabama! It's hot as hell and tough as nails and we do fine just for ourselves! Just give me time is what I tell 'em all! Just get in line behind me is what I tell 'em all! Don't try to undermine me! You can't come down here blindly with impatience and expect the United Nations! This is the South! Alabama is my house! And I'm here to work it out! I am the governer - nobody should doubt this is my Alabama and I have a plan to get her through this racial disaster if the country'd just get off my back for a minute! instead of coming down to my State and pokin' and proddin' in it! and causin' a problem in it! But it's too late anyways for these bus-riding idiots and the Kennedies! I'll have my revenge on these treas- onous bastards! I'm rolling up my sleeves and I'll teach'em to agitate and hobble and bother - M: That's enough! You sound like the men who murdered your father! P: Gentleman, I am sorry for my outburst and I hope it does not hurt our work- ing relationship because what we're doing here is urg- ent and more important than personal venom. Joe Reed, I understand you are in a position of leadership for a group against desegregation? R: Yes, sir. I'm the organizer for this city of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. P: Very good. Please sit with me and help me see things through your eyes for exactly a half-hour. Dr Reddick may I please use your desk for now wh- ile I'm in this office? I'm sorry but the papers have already gone through for your removal, but I'd like it if you could sit with us, too, and give your views on all this. First things first though is take care of the worst - tell me what you need to get those buses and riders safely across Alabama, Mann. Then run out and call the cabinet to meet and I'll ask Kennedy to speed us all the help from Washington that he can. Let's screw up our courage and intelligence, fellows. Let's forget our personal hurt. It is time to work. ===== ===== (iv) Historical Notes and Liberties John Patterson's father was shot to death in Phenix City, Alabama in June of 1954 after winning the Democratic nomination for Attorney General - in his campaign he had promised to rout organized crime from Phenix City. In the wake of his father's death, John Patterson ran instead and became the 36th Attorney General of Alabama. Four years later, he ran for governor. By then, Alabama was afire with racial rhetoric, and John Patterson took a strong stance for segregation. He won the election and became the 44th Governor of Alabama. Joe Reed was a student at Alabama State College during John Patterson's tenure as Alabama's governor. Reed, as well as about 30 other men, including Dr Reddick of Alabama State College, staged an interracial sit-in at the county courthouse in Montgomery in 1960 to protest segregated seating. Several students were expelled and Dr Reddick lost his job, most likely due to Governor Patterson's leadership of the school's board. In this play, the meetings between Governor Patterson and Joe Reed are fictionalized, but in reality these two men's paths would cross several times across the years; in spite of their differences, both would come to appreciate the other's respect for law and just legal proceedings. In 1961, the Freedom Riders rode interstate buses into Alabama in mixed racial groups to protest segregation. They were met with terrible mob violence by white segregationists. A bus was firebombed outside of Anniston, where the mob held the doors closed to burn the riders inside to death. An undercover state investigator - placed on the bus by Governor Patterson and his Director of Public Safety, Floyd Mann - brandished a revolver and the mob yielded, allowing the riders to escape the flames, though many were still beaten and harrassed in the streets. Although the two events took place a year apart, this play puts the sit-in at the courthouse and the bombing of the Freedom Riders' bus on the same day.