Union Leader Turned Playwright's 'The Moment Was Now' Explores Baltimore's Post-Civil War Social Justice Climate
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- As Black History Month ends, a new play explores what Baltimore was like 150 years ago when the 15th amendment giving black men the right to vote was ratified.
"The Moment Was Now" is set in 1869 Baltimore. WJZ anchor Denise Koch got to see it performed along with a group of high schoolers.
It was a brisk two-block walk from the Baltimore School For The Arts to Emmanuel Episcopal Church, where the upper hall has been turned into a theatre.
The play brings together some of the most important social justice leaders of the post-Civil War era in Baltimore. While they all knew each other, they never managed to find real solidarity: Frederick Douglass, Isaac Myers, Susan B. Anthony, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and labor leader William Sylvis.
"This was a story that inspired me about Reconstruction, and this was a story that needed to be told so I took a shot at it," Gene Bruskin said.
Most of the language in the play is lifted directly from either the speeches or the writing of the actual characters. It's then turned into lyrical or spoken word.
Playwriting is new territory for Bruskin, who spent 40 years as a union organizer in factories and with workers across the country.
The professional cast members call themselves "The Cultural Worker Ensemble," singing in all genres about solidarity and what might have been.
"This is what the play is about: can we build this unity and today these questions are still before us," Bruskin said.
His goal is to open peoples' eyes to their own history.
"I wanted people to come to this play from unions and community groups, we have people from housing projects, high school students, they're the ones who don't get to know their own history and this is their history," he said.
The show will run for the next two weekends. For more information, click here.