ITHACA, NEW YORK—As I drove across the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, my little truck labored to climb the steep hills. Every so often I pulled over to allow the cars behind me to pass.
I was getting anxious about running out of time. It was the end of November, the weather was getting colder, and I had promised to be home by Christmas. If I headed straight back, I’d have nearly 2,700 miles to drive. But I wanted to swing south, through Louisiana, Texas, and the Southwest, so the trip would be much longer.
The decline of this area of New York State is striking. Homes are well worn, some have been restored, but many others are propped up with a few concrete blocks or tarped over. Many were surrounded by rusting RVs and cars.
And then there are the old barns. Many still provide shelter for animals and their feed, although daylight shone through the boards, and the structures seemed to be sinking in slow motion into the earth. The back of one barn was splayed out so that each stud was at a different angle, forming a fan. Another was propped up by poles stuck into the decaying walls, seeming to rest its weary bones on a walking stick.
Most of these towns appear to be predominantly white, as is Ithaca, which is 74 percent white.1 In this progressive college town where a majority votes Democratic, few would identify the city as having issues of racial discord. White people, especially in the North, often reassure themselves that they are not racist and that issues of social justice are for others to worry about.
Racial segregation in the United States may actually be increasing, though. One indication is school attendance; the percentage of black students attending schools that are 90 percent minority or more increased from 34 percent in 1993 to 40 percent in 2013, according to a report by the Hillman Foundation.2
I met Godfrey L. Simmons Jr. and Sarah Chalmers in the second-story offices of the Workers Center, above the city’s main street. We sat down at a table in their corner of this open space where nonprofits of all sorts use mismatched desks, tables, posters, books, and flyers in their quest for social change.
Simmons and Chalmers are a married couple as well as collaborators and founders of the Civic Ensemble; he’s African American, and she’s white. They have the gregarious personalities of theater people, combined with a habit of finishing each other’s sentences.
The Civic Ensemble uses story circles to draw out the experiences and beliefs of the community; the narratives that emerge become the grist for their productions. A prompt from the organizers gets the sessions started. They might ask, When have you felt unsafe? Or, Tell us about an encounter you had with the police.
Sarah Chalmers and Godfrey L. Simmons Jr. (left and right) are the founders of the Civic Ensemble; Jason Wilson (center) is a member of the cast for the production On the Corner.
Participants in the circle take turns telling their stories. Others listen. Having the chance to talk without interruption allows the stories to go deep and brings out the voices that are normally silent, and it makes it possible for them to address taboo topics.
“The people we work with tell the story of what it’s like to be poor, what it’s like to be a person of color walking down the street,” Chalmers said.
A mom at one of these circles shared the experience of her two sons, African American middle schoolers, who missed their school bus. Not wanting to admit to their mom what happened, they decided to walk. But their school was far from home, and the route took them through a wealthy, white neighborhood where a woman who saw them called the police.
In this case, the story ended well—the officer quickly grasped the situation, called the boys’ mother, and asked permission to take them to school. The mom was grateful, and all was well.
Still, there’s the question of why a white woman would call the police on these two young boys. The Civic Ensemble explores that question in On the Corner, which was inspired by another, more dangerous incident that took place in Ithaca around the same time that Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri. A police officer, out of uniform, driving an unmarked car, ordered two black teenagers to the ground, with his gun drawn.
The community was outraged by the event and frightened by the possibility that the youths could have been killed. At a meeting, an African American elder said something that especially caught Chalmers’s attention. As she remembers it, he stated, “The kids and the cops on the corner don’t know where they came from. They don’t understand the context of the script they’re playing out.”
Chalmers and Simmons decided that script was worth exploring.
In their fictionalized version, an African American teenager from the Bronx, “Julian,” is sent to Ithaca by his mom to live with his aunt and uncle in order to keep him out of trouble. Several months later, his mother dies, and the distraught youth takes off walking. Not knowing where he’s going, he wanders into the neighborhood described in the story circle, and an older white woman, “Mrs. Whitney,” sees him and calls the police.
The play focuses on the interaction of Julian and the white police officer who responds to the call. The officer quickly discovers that Julian’s description matches that of a missing young person and urges him to return home. But Julian refuses, saying he won’t go back until he understands how they got there—why was he stopped on the street when he was just walking? Why did someone call the police?
In the play, the white cop and the black teenager travel back in time to relive history, from the Wall Street slave markets of 1690 to a high school in the Bronx in 1978, bringing in racially charged events and references unique to Ithaca. The white woman who called the police is questioned, and she denies her action was racially motivated. In her defense, she tells the audience that she has even read Michelle Alexander’s book on mass imprisonment, The New Jim Crow.
“The play welcomes everyone who recognizes themselves—whether you recognize the police officer or the young man or Mrs. Whitney—on the journey,” Chalmers noted.
“It’s not a play where a black teenager gets to learn and the cop is the savior,” commented Simmons. “Nor is it a play where the black kid is the magic negro. There are two people who represent a binary of people who are ignorant of how we got here.”
Ithaca residents contributed to the play from start to finish: They shared their stories and transcribed the recordings, and many participated in follow-up sessions that helped to flesh out the details of the play. Community members made up the acting ensemble and the audience, and some stayed afterward for discussion.
Jason Wilson, a member of the On the Corner cast, joined us at the Workers Center as we talked. Wilson has short cropped hair and wore a black leather bomber jacket. Performing as part of the cast “helped me break down a few walls within myself,” he said. “You don’t build that kind of comradery in a machine shop—you’re putting yourself out there with other people, you have each other’s back, you try to be there for each other on stage and off. I feel more a part of a community here, rather than how one might feel, invisible or whatever.”
Ithaca residents helped create the Civic Ensemble’s production of On the Corner.
The experience in the theater shifts the conversation on taboo topics like race and class, explained Simmons. “People can have conversations that they might not have anywhere else.”
We know that the way society is structured is not okay, Chalmers said. “It’s not okay that some people can’t eat, and that some people don’t get to learn, and some don’t have a shelter.”
To build a different sort of world, Chalmers said, we have to hear one another—to understand the experiences of people in our community, including those we rarely spend time with. And we need to allow ourselves the space to imagine something else, to remember that we do have the power. Society “is something we made. But we can make something else,” she said. “When we create a play, we practice making something else.”
“What we make, and how we make it, matters,” she said. “And it changes us.”
• • •
In each of the places I visited during this part of my trip, people were intentionally taking on racism and white supremacy, but in a way unique to that community’s circumstances and capacities. In Greensboro, truth and reconciliation, a civil rights museum, a plaque commemorating a massacre, story circles, and a black-owned food cooperative are all means of creating a different story of what it means to be black or white in that city. In Harrisonburg, the police are learning from the EMU community of peacebuilders how to use restorative justice to build relationships of respect and understanding. In Newark, a mayor who came from the black community is working to rebuild the city, not so it can bring in new, wealthier, and whiter residents, but so the people already there can thrive. And in Appalachia, a radio program that connects prison inmates to those they love helps humanize the incarcerated residents of the hill country. And resistance to yet another new prison is calling into question an economic development strategy based on holding thousands of people, especially people of color, behind bars.
Historical marker in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In community, we can comprehend each other more fully as complex, multifaceted human beings, and perhaps we become harder to stereotype. We can share stories, and over time those stories can build into a common understanding of who we are in all of our diversity. Then, perhaps, a new inclusive story can emerge—one that can take us into a more just future. Maybe, even, to a beloved community.
