Race on stage

Plays show what radical progress looks like | Marvin Olasky

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The Obama presidency, for all its problems, still signifies a breakthrough in U.S. race relations. A musical and a drama that opened in New York theaters last month, and are likely to have long runs on Broadway or in repertory around the country, suggest a movement away from pessimism.

The Broadway musical is Memphis, an energetic depiction in song and dance of a time in the 1950s when some white churchgoers damaged the reputation of Christ by thinking more about race than grace, and some black churchgoers and club-owners expected malign intention in any whites who strolled onto their premises. One of the battlegrounds was music, as fans of Perry Como and Patti Page feared that blues and rock would be entry drugs leading to societal upheaval.

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November 21, 2009, Vol. 24, No. 23

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