Passinart Theater Company "Bourbon at the Border" by Pearl Cleage

PassinArt theater company will open 'Bourbon at the Border' at Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center Thursday Oct. 13.

The play, by the award-winning Atlanta-based writer Pearl Cleage offers an intimate story of an African-American couple whose lives were forever changed after they became Freedom Riders, during the civil rights era.

It was 1961 when the civil rights pioneers who became the famed Freedom Riders traveled to the Deep South to defy Jim Crow. Their goal? To test the 1960 Supreme Court Ruling that declared segregation in interstate buses and rail stations unconstitutional. The Freedom riders showed incredible courage in the face of hatred and extreme violence. Many endured savage beatings and brutality while local police refused to intervene. Yet their endurance and courage would inspire America and transform the Civil Rights Movement. In November 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued rules prohibiting segregation transportation facilities.

Bourbon at the Border takes us into the lives of May and Charlie, who joined hundreds of other Americans on a journey to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 for a massive voter registration drive, they had no idea how big a decision that was or how it would reverberate through their lives.

As students at Howard University, their campus activism had been simply met with annoying calls to their parents and constant threats of expulsion. However, the stakes in Mississippi were a lot higher. White supremacists, outraged at the challenge to their segregated way of life, responded with violence that left three civil rights workers dead and many wounded.

'Bourbon at the Border' will show at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays to Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays at the Interstate Firehouse, 5340 N Interstate Ave.

The production will run through Nov. 5., Tickets are: $20 and $17 students and seniors.

For more information Call 503.235.8079 mailto:passinart@yahoo.com or visit: www.passinart.org