TURNING 15 ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

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Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom tells the moving, true story of Lynda Blackmon, one of the youngest participants in the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.  Jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. to secure the right to vote for African-Americans.Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom tells the moving, true story of Lynda Blackmon, one of the youngest participants in the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.  Jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. to secure the right to vote for African-Americans.

NEWS






High talent permeates all aspects of this production.

This is the hope necessary to counter the current climate of despair.

. . . what a cast! What a talented cast delivers this Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom.

. . . [a] timely and prayerfully crafted production which restores the soul.
— Ebele Oseye, Black Star News

The Story of a Child Who Marched With MLK at Selma Is Coming to the Stage


 
 

New York’s FOX 5 Ernie Anastos with Lynda Blackmon Lowery on Instagram


The new musical ‘Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom’ follows a rising tide of worldwide political and social activism spearheaded by young people in this country and around the world.
— Ojinika Obiekwe, PIX 11 news



 
 



The show is a musical dynamo filled with original gospel and freedom songs sung by a stellar cast of vibrant young performers.
— Toby Hershkowitz & Sixto Reynoso ABC 7

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Jason Bodnick recommends Turning 15 On The Road To Freedom. Just saw a fantastic show at Delray Arts Garage. Uplifting, educational, and relevant today. If it comes to your town, don’t miss it. #turning15ontheroadtofreedom

Freda DeFosse recommends Turning 15 On The Road To Freedom. saw this show tonight at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach, FL.... one word....SPECTACULAR! okay...more than one... moving, captivating, honest, true, etc etc. I cried with them, I laughed with them, I felt like I was transported back to 1965 in Alabama and wanted to join them in their fight for civil rights for all. This cast and production should be shown in every middle school and high school across the country so young people today can understand and learn how they too can make a difference in this country. Thank you for your exquisite presentation and hope you will be back again to enlightened another group of young and not so young people.
Photo by Linn Washington

Photo by Linn Washington


Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom had my adult and student performance attendees spellbound - the story is riveting and relevant, the acting is passionate and appropriately intense. This is a show every one of us should see.
— Marjorie Waldo, Arts Garage, Delray Beach, FL 2020

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom was one of the most powerful pieces of theatre I’ve ever experienced. Being performed in the historic Riverside Church, a bastion of social justice and a familiar pulpit for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it not only brought the house down, but brought everyone to tears. Lynda Blackmon Lowery’s message that each of us must do our part in securing equal rights for all people has never been more timely or more urgent.
— Reverend Ellen Robison, Minister of Worship and the Arts, The Riverside Church of New York City

Photo by Linn Washington

Photo by Linn Washington

...This is so moving, so impressive, so stirringand informative—this is somethingthat can make people realize their power.
— Linda Armstrong, Amsterdam News, 12/20/2018

With a blend of spiritual and freedom inspired music and projections of the historical figures and real demonstrations, you felt in the thick of it. The singing and acting Ensemble were soul-stirring in their harmonies.
— Eva Heinemann, Hi! Drama January 19, 2019


Arrested nine times before turning 15
Stage performance highlights youth activist seeking voting rights
— Miami Times, October 3rd, 2018
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A powerful story of the ordinary people who made the Civil Rights Movement succeed – proof that anyone can make history, and no one is too young.
— Theater Development Fund, New York City

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This delightfully accessible show is great for kids, but also electrifying enough to keep the attention of adults as well.
— YES Broadway, New York

Fantastic Winter theater shows for NYC Kids . . . An inspiring story for politically-minded tweens and teens.
— Mommy Poppins

Linda Blackmon Lowery, Youngest Selma Marcher, Inspires Students

In March 1965, Lynda Blackmon Lowery was the youngest person to march from Selma to Montgomery in an effort to register black voters as part of the civil rights movement. She was beaten in the historic confrontation on the Edmund Pettis Bridge and required stitches to close two cuts on her head. Lowery returned to march a few weeks later, one of only 300 people allowed to start from Selma again, cross the bridge—with an escort from National Guardsman—and walk for days to Montgomery, where they were joined by thousands of people.  She turned 15 during that march that helped bring about the Voting Right’s Act. As part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day programming, school librarian Alla Umanskaya invited Lowery to PS/IS 30 Mary White Ovington school in Brooklyn, NY, to tell her story directly to the students. For her part, Lowery wants kids to know that young people can make a difference.


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“Impactful! A powerful experience for young people – and not so young people.”
—National Public Radio, WAMC, Albany NY

Originally planned by Joe Donohue for 12 minutes, he devoted the entire hour to the story and we had audience from as far away as Springfield and New Jersey as a result.


I remember the first time I heard Dr. King speak,” said Lynda Lowery. “He told the church audience ‘you can get anyone to do anything through steady, loving confrontation.’ I knew right then that was how I was going to be able to make a difference in the world.
— BOOK TURNED INTO STAGE ADAPTATION | Selma Times-Journal

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Review from the (Hudson, NY) Register Star 2-14-2016

One Woman Play about Voting Rights draws Sold-Out Crowd

When Obi began to sing the lyrics of the African-American civil rights movement protest song, “We Shall Overcome,” to close the performance, more voices began to join her. The sounds of humming and singing provided body to what was originally Obi’s solo, a gesture which would sum up Lowery’s stance on the civil rights movement as a whole. The stage went dark and Obi, who portrayed Lowery in the play, was met with a standing ovation and many audience members wiped their eyes.
— Jillian Nadiak

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From IMBY Catskill, February 13, 2017

“This is why theater is more than entertainment . . . its purpose is to activate the soul, wake us up, make sure we keep our souls intact—by doing the work which must be done and when it is needed. Thank you Bridge Street Theatre.”

—Scott Myers



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Albany Times-Union, February 6,  2016

Civil rights story portrayed

Ally Sheedy, known for roles in movies "The Breakfast Club" and "Psych," will direct a one-woman performance based on the 2015 memoir, "Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March" by Lynda Blackmon Lowery.

The performance will be 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, at M.C. Smith Intermediate School, 102 Harry Howard Ave., Hudson.

The Hudson High School Choir will open the event by performing songs from the civil rights era, and the show stars actress Damaras Obi. The story recounts the experiences of a Lowery growing up in Selma, Ala., during the height of the civil rights movement. She was jailed nine times before her 15th birthday as a result of her participation in voting rights marches. After the show, Lowery will share her experiences and answer questions.

In preparation for the performance, Edgar Acevedo, a fifth-grade M.C. Smith teacher, incorporated the book into his lessons. The focus of study was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a topic included in the New York state curriculum modules, so his class tied the book into the declaration whenever possible.

"We developed background knowledge as we read the book," Acevedo said. As kids had questions, they would use their Chromebooks to research topics such as the U.S. Congress, different time periods, and make comparisons to what was happening during the 1960s. The suggested donation is $10 for adults and free for children under the age of 12. All tickets will be sold at the door. Proceeds will benefit the Hudson
Area Library.

The project is presented by the Loire Valley Theater Festival, Miranda Barry (producer), and the Hudson Area Library and is supported by the Martha Boschen Porter Fund of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, the Galvan Foundation, the David Murphy Charitable Fund, and Hudson River Bank and Trust.


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Telling stories of risk and courage
By John Mason

HUDSON - It was the 1960s again in the central room of the Hudson Area Library Thursday evening as concentric circles of people gathered to tell and hear first-hand stories about the U.S. Civil Rights movement.

Some of the stories took place in the Deep South, others in the Segregated North, but they all shared the excitement of incredible and profound change and the struggle against injustice.

Pamela Badila and two students from Perfect Ten, Hallie Delesline and Emma Krein-Hart, led the evening off with a rousing spiritual, and organizers Miranda Barry and Ann Rosenthal provided the introductions. 

Musician and conductor Gwen Gould said she first became involved as a sophomore in her rural Dutchess County high school in 1959. Episcopal Church youth conferences led to her joining the 1963 March on Washington.

"It was spooky: The roads were cleared," she said. "There was no traffic other than the buses. It was powerful hearing Martin Luther King speak." In college in southern Indiana, she was friends all four years with three of the few African-American women in the school. As a freshman, the university called her mother to see if it was "OK" if she roomed with a black woman.

Bob Heller was one of the Freedom Riders. Born in Long Island, he attended Tulane University in Louisiana in 1959-1960. Witnessing segregation for the first time, he joined the Conference on Racial Equality in his sophomore year. At a national CORE meeting, he met CORE President James Farmer, who came up with the idea for the Freedom Rides based on Gandhi's march to the sea in India. The idea was to integrate transportation of all kinds - segregation was illegal, but was still practiced. Some of the riders started in the north and came south on buses; others, like Heller, got on trains in New Orleans and went north, in this case to Jackson, Mississippi.

There, they got off the train and whites would use colored only drinking fountains or colored-only bathrooms, and blacks would use white fountains or bathrooms. They were immediately arrested and escorted to paddy wagons.

Heller said he was one of the first white people in jail, but the big room filled up quickly.

“I was there three or four weeks,” he said. “The idea was to fill up the jails and get as much publicity as possible. We were treated fairly decently because they felt the world was looking at us. I felt the Kennedys were giving us protection.”

Heller said that, after 40 years, the Occupy Wall Street movement reawakened his interest in politics and he leafletted for it in the New York subway system.

“I’m a great believer in protest,” he said.

Hudson gallery owner Mark Orton was in a northern Wisconsin college in the late 1960s. “If you were in college, you weren’t drafted,” he said. “The injustice was obvious.”

The Student Christian Leadership Conference was trying to start something in Chicago, and Orton and his friends drove down for spring break. Their task was to canvas door-to-door.

“I just remember the incredible power of marching up to a tenant’s door and saying, ‘Dr. King sent me,’“ he said. “Every door opened.” One time, he said, it was a group of hairdressers. “I felt I was trespassing, but they invited me in and made coffee,” he said. “I told them the whole story.”

Orton said he now fears for the safety of his two African-American grandchildren in New York City.

Ruth Tamiroff of Hudson worked for a Chicago peace organization at the time.

“I got involved with whatever I could do with SCLC,” she said. She worked a few days a week at the YWCA with a group of African-American Head Start mothers. They found that supermarkets in the suburbs were charging less for groceries than those in the inner city.

“We organized a caravan to bring black mothers out to the suburbs to go shopping,” she said, and another to take white mothers into the inner city to shop. They were worried because the inner city store appeared nice, and TV viewers would ask, “What’s wrong with that?”

“But an amazing thing happened. That night on TV, we saw that after the caravan left all the black employees walked off the job: They knew they were making less money. They ended that supermarket.”

One of the highlights of her experience came when she had to meet and talk with Coretta Scott King during a two-hour taxi ride. “Unbelievable excitement,” she said. “She was a marvelous woman.”

Videographer Todd Martin said, “The struggle continues. It’s hard to legislate people’s hearts. Every generation requires that you stand up and fight oppression. How can we put ourselves out there to say this is not acceptable? People have gotten complacent, but injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. People died, suffered were beaten: You’re standing on the shoulders of these people.

[You have to say]: ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes because I’m going to have children. What are the issue I want to be involved in?’ Every generation has its activists.”

The event was in connection with a performance and residency inspired by Lynda Blackmon Lowery’s memoir, “Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom.”  Lowery was the youngest person to complete the historic march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. A play based on her book will be performed at 3 p.m. Feb. 13 at M.C. Smith Intermediate School. Lowery and director Ally Sheedy will be there to speak with the audience.


From Rural Intelligence Feb 9, 2016

History becomes a memoir, a play, and a call to action.
— Jamie Larson, Rural Intelligence, Great Barrington, MA