Virtual Performance: "This Little Light" & Panel: Women’s Vote Centennial: A Historical Perspective Panel

Virtual Performance: "This Little Light" & Panel: Women’s Vote Centennial: A Historical Perspective Panel25oct7:00 pm7:00 pm

Event Details

Written and performed by Dr. Billie Jean Young

BILLIE JEAN YOUNG’s performance in Fannie Lou Hamer: This Little Light is an amazingly apt portrayal of the Mississippi civil and voting rights activist of the same name. Young effortlessly captures Hamer’s dialect, personality, oratorical skills, physical movement, even her bodily limp, and serves as a poignant reminder to those who remember. Through the several other characters depicted in  the one-woman show, audiences, young and old, are also thrust front and center into the fray, the dangers, the turmoil of the 60’s fight for citizenship. After over 800 live stage performances on four continents, Billie Jean Young allowed this film version during the 2020 pandemic and civil rights and voting rights crises so that after 38 years, her original goal of taking Mrs. Hamer’s message to the world continues.

In partnership withCity of Cambridge Citizens’ Committee on Civic Unity and YWCA Cambridge

Description: After the performance join experts and Youth Underground as we explore the impact of the women’s suffrage movement.

Funded in part by the Cambridge Arts Council and by Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

more

Speakers for this event

  • Dr. Billie Jean Young

    Dr. Billie Jean Young

    at home and abroad to build social bridges and encourage economic justice for all people. A MacArthur Fellow, she has educated and inspired hundreds of audiences the world over through her theatrical performances, books, poetry readings and speeches.

    For more than three decades, Billie Jean has shared with the world the life story of human rights activist and Mississippi sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer. In her moving performances of the highly acclaimed one-woman play – Fannie Lou Hamer: This Little Light – and in her efforts to give voice to the disenfranchised people of the rural Deep South and America, Billie Jean inspires change and creates new understandings in the spirit of Ms. Hamer. She has given more than 800 performances on four continents.

    URL http://www.billiejeanyoung.com/

  • E. Denise Simmons

    E. Denise Simmons

    E. Denise Simmons, a lifelong resident of Cambridge, is currently serving her ninth term on the Cambridge City Council, and has served two terms as Mayor of Cambridge. Denise has spent the past three decades working to better her community – first as the Executive Director of the Cambridge Civic Unity Committee in the 1980s, then as a member of the Cambridge School Committee in the 1990s, and since 2002, as a member of the Cambridge City Council.
    In 2008, Denise drew national attention when she became the nation’s first Black, openly lesbian mayor (and the first Black female mayor in Massachusetts). Once again serving as mayor, Denise continues striving to make City Hall more responsive to the community by holding weekly walk-in hours for constituents, by opening up the Mayor’s Parlor for public celebrations and ceremonies, and by holding periodic Town Hall style meetings. These meetings, such as the LGBT Town Hall and the Senior Citizens Town Hall, have allowed different constituency groups to come in to City Hall and speak directly to civic leaders, and to foster a greater understanding of how the City could be of greater service to its citizens.
    During the 2014-2015 term, then-Councilor Simmons Co-Chaired the Economic Development & University Relations Committee, focused on exploring and then enacting ordinance changes to provide greater job protections and wage fairness for City janitors and custodians, to provide a stronger example for how all Cambridge employers should be treating their workers. As Chair of the Civic Unity Committee, Denise continued leading regular discussions about how Cambridge, as an employer and as a community, could strive to ensure that all of its people are treated fairly, equitably, and respectfully. As Chair of the Housing Committee, Denise held regular discussions focusing on how to preserve and increase the number of affordable housing units available, how to ensure that housing applicants understand the search process, and how to ensure that all affordable housing search processes are fair and accessible.During the 2016-2017 Council term, Denise worked to re-launch the Cambridge Girls Leadership Group, which she first established when she was mayor in 2008. This leadership group for 8th Grade girls from across Cambridge will offer monthly lessons on etiquette, proper study habits, and how to prepare for success in high school and beyond. She also worked on establishing a Cambridge Museum, and on spreading the word to community members about how to most effectively search for affordable housing.

  • Eva Martin Blythe

    Eva Martin Blythe

    Eva Martin Blythe has been a YWCA Executive Director for 30+ years. She joined the YWCA Cambridge staff in 2007. Prior to coming to Cambridge, she was Executive Director of the YWCA in Durham Region, Ontario for 15 years. Eva served on both the Congressional and campaign staffs of a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and she is a former Director of the Housing Assistance Staff at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. She is a graduate of the University of Kansas.

    Currently she is a member of: the Cambridge City Manager’s Advisory Committee, the Cambridge Citizens Committee on Civic Unity, and Central Square Business Improvement District board.

    Eva is the mother of two adult sons.

  • Janet Moses

    Janet Moses

    Dr. Janet Jermmott Moses is from the Bronx, NY. In her early twenties, she became a young organizer with SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) in Mississippi. There she met and later married fellow organizer Bob Moses, and moved with him to Tanzania where they lived and started their family. Janet, Bob, and their four children moved to Cambridge, MA in the mid-1970s where they settled and where Janet later decided to go to medical school. As a pediatrician at MIT, Janet was much loved by her patients and in the community. After 13 years, Janet retired into active grandmotherhood, and currently volunteers with her friends to teach history to CRLS students as a part of the Kimbrough Scholars Program.