January 13, 2003

RELEASE IMMEDIATELY

CONTACT:

Angela Jones, Public Information Officer
City of Richmond / City Manager’s Office
(510) 621-1230

STAGE DRAMA ATTRACTS MULTI-CULTURAL GATHERING TO CELEBRATE LEGACY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Audience treated to first-hand accounts by those who walked
with Dr. King and Malcolm X

By Angela Jones.

The Richmond Memorial Auditorium was decorated with a simple set designed to recreate a suite on an upper floor of a Harlem hotel in New York City. When the lights come up, Malcolm X and his bodyguard, Rashad, are in the room awaiting the arrival of Martin Luther King, Jr., who had reluctantly agreed to a clandestine meeting with Malcolm.  Neither of them could know that just hours from then, Malcolm X would be assassinated as he addressed a crowd in the Audubon Ballroom. 

There in the Auditorium, more than 400 people gathered to witness a moment in history that never occurred. What if a meeting between two of the most important civil rights leaders of modern times had actually taken place? The drama is the highly acclaimed one-act stage play, “The Meeting,” written by Jeff Stetson and directed by Gloria Weinstock. The actors are bay area professionals with impressive film and television credits, including James Brooks as Dr. King, Michael Lange as Malcolm X, and Richmond native Doward Washington as Rashad.

After cautiously sizing each other up, even matching wits and strength in a bout of arm wrestling, Martin and Malcolm relax their anxieties and fall into a spirited debate about their differing approaches to improving the lives of black people in a predominantly white society.

The performance included reflections by people who personally knew Dr. King and Malcolm X, including Richmond Mayor Irma L. Anderson who opened the celebration by sharing her experiences with Dr. King.  Mayor Anderson stated that her husband, the late Booker T. Anderson had worked with Dr. King on several occasions.  She brought a photograph from her own collection that showed her husband arm in arm with Dr. King during a visit to Richmond in 1961 at the Easter Hill Methodist Church, before the church changed its name to the current Easter Hill United Methodist Church.

The audience also discovered that Rev. Phillip Lawson, Pastor of the Easter Hill United Methodist Church “grew up early on beginning to understand the meaning of justice.”  Rev. Lawson said he was called a communist at age 16 in 1950 at a sit-in in Washington, D.C.  Still, he counts himself fortunate to have close contact with those who were involved with the civil rights movement, particularly his older brother, James, who spent 3 years in federal prison for avoiding the draft.  Lawson reminded the gathering that the civil rights movement began long before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in December 1955, which was the catalyst for the year long bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.  His brother was later invited to Tennessee by Dr. King in 1955-56 to work for the movement, which was already underway.

The woman who held Malcolm X in her arms as he died from an assassin’s bullet on February 21, 1965, was Yuri Kochiyama.  The small, frail woman made her way to the stage with the help of an aluminum walker, took center stage and with a strong determined voice gave high praise to the writer and actors of the moving drama.  A personal friend of Malcolm X, she described him as fearless, open-minded, intuitive, passionate and unpretentious.  She saw him as a man who made Black people proud of their African American heritage and taught them what was happening to Black people.  “He was a phenomenon,” said Kochiyama, “a rare human being who became a symbol of courage and sacrifice for his people, taking on the fear of the unknown and the potential for the reality for what could be.”

Many in the audience said they were moved by the performance and that the drama gave them a much clearer understanding about Dr. King and the differences and parallels of his philosophy compared to that of Malcolm X.  Others say they brought their children to hear what life was like for their older relatives and those who lived in the south during one of the most tumultuous times in our nation’s history.