Columbia Days

Text & direction by George Rideout
Musical direction: Jamie Crooks
Choreography: Cory Bowles

The year is 1959. A new music continues to sweep the nation--rock & roll. The ongoing fight for racial equality in the American south is heating up.
Walter Young's father is the only white professor at Allen, an African Methodist university in Columbia, South Carolina. Ten year old Walter lives in a black neighborhood, plays with black friends, but goes to a white school as the law requires. Through the eyes of this boy and the pulsating rhythms of the new beat, we experience a family's struggle to survive the violent upheaval taking place in southern society, an upheaval that provokes hatred and violence, but also small acts of great courage and love.

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