When were Blacks in America truly free? At the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, Surrender, Reconstruction, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or maybe never? This is a question that resonates throughout the new folk opera, Jubilee, which adapts the novel, “Jubilee” by Margaret Walker, the esteemed African American writer and chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Walker wrote to rid America of systemic racism that she experienced in her own life, and the opera connects the uncomfortable truths of the Civil War era and beyond with those of the 1960s. Walker’s clarion call for resilience, hopefulness, and healing are all part of a racial reckoning to help effect change for those still fettered by social, economic and political constraints that society continues to impose.

The opera is the real-life story of Margaret Walker’s great-grandmother Vyry’s 19th century journey from Slavery to Emancipation to Reconstruction, juxtaposed against the 20th century civil rights struggle, as chronicled by Walker’s poems from her collection, “This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems,” bringing the continuing multi-generational struggle for equality into sharp relief. Her story is highlighted by two choruses, a Black enslaved chorus, and a modern day-mixed-race chorus representing the civil rights struggle of the 60’s. These choruses sing Negro spirituals as well as Walker’s poetry, set to music, with its fierce, lyrical language, depicting freedom rides, protest marches, and a myriad of injustices of everyday life, all cross-cut with Vyry’s story throughout the opera. Margaret becomes a character in the opera–the narrator–and does what she does best-she writes the story of her people as the opera unfolds.

Vyry’s story begins in 1863 during the Civil War when Vyry is a house slave on the Dutton Plantation in Georgia. Marse John Dutton has been killed in the war, and his bigoted widow Big Missy and fragile daughter Miss Lillian are left to run the plantation. When a Union soldier comes and announces the passage of The Emancipation Proclamation, he is run off by Big Missy. Though some slaves are ready to leave, not Vyry. She is waiting for her husband Randall Ware, a freeman fighting with the North, to come to take her and their two children, Jim, age 6, and Minna, age 5, to freedom. Vyry remains until Surrender. Randall does not return, but Innis Brown, now a freed slave from the Carolinas is passing through and saves Vyry from rape by marauding Union soldiers. Hearing a report that Randall is dead, she marries Innis and she and the children go with Innis to Alabama. Throughout Reconstruction, five years go by and their hardships mount, from poor land, a cheating landlord, an attack by the KKK, and the sheer exhaustion of homesteading, all contrasted with the obstacles faced by Blacks in the 1960’s. Vyry’s adversities are enough to wear her down, but Vyry stays optimistic and is grateful to the hard-working Innis who loves her and treats her children as his own. Yet the biggest challenge comes when Randall appears and wants to take his family away, and Vyry must choose.

The opera has a musical palette with gospel, jazz, and blues influences, and has ten principal singers (including four children) and two eight-person choruses. Projections will be used in the set design.

Running time: Approx. 2 hours, including an intermission