Motion in the Ocean: Some political dimensions of the Free Southern Theatre

Extract

I remember thinking it strange, when I first started working in the Southern Student Movement in 1962, that there were so many people who, like me, thought of themselves as poets. I wrote a letter (to someone) describing them as poets who had come to the conclusion that the most profound poetry is the poetry of action and movement. When the problem becomes unspeakable then there is simply nothing to say—something must be done.

I was in the third wave of “students” who swept through the South with a dream in the early ‘60's. Sit-ins in ‘60, Freedom Rides in ‘61, and in ‘62 the forces gathered around the right to vote. After each wave there was a period of uncertainty while the new motion was in the making. That was a time to survey the damage and chaos which often seem to follow in the wake of dreams.