Opal Lee brings acclaimed Fannie Lou Hamer play to Fort Worth to inspire voters
DALLAS — This weekend, a voting rights history lesson is coming to the IM Terrell Performing Arts Center in Fort Worth. Supporters insist that the one-woman stage play will uplift the audience, even as they learn about Fannie Lou Hamer.
"Well, I saw her on a show in New York," actress Mzuri Moyo Aimbaye said. "And Fannie Lou Hamer had already transitioned and she was talking about how she was beaten unmercifully and I said, 'Wow, I didn't know. I had never heard of her!' And you know something? That day I said, 'I'm going to write a story about her.'"
And so she did. In the decades since Aimbaye has performed the stage play she wrote about the life of Hamer in theaters around the country.
So what brings her to Fort Worth? Or should we ask 'who'?
"You don't say 'no' to her," said Aimbaye of Fort Worth's Ms. Opal Lee with a laugh. "I said, 'Mother, we don't have time.' She said, 'Yes, we do. We got two weeks.' I said, okay. I heard a voice say, 'move out the way.' So here we are."
Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi. During the civil rights struggles of the early 1960s, she was arrested and jailed for working to register Black people to vote. While jailed, other prisoners were forced to beat her. She suffered permanent kidney damage, and a blood clot behind her eye, and walked with a limp for the rest of her life. Still, she would not be silenced. Something that she and the stage play's benefactor have in common. Ms. Opal, often called the 'Grandmother of Juneteenth,' was so moved after seeing an excerpt of the play recently in Atlanta that she's personally underwriting the effort to bring the play to audiences in Fort Worth.
"How that girl in Mississippi tried to vote and they beat her unmerciful!" said Lee, as we chatted prior to a Thursday afternoon rehearsal at the performing arts center. "We don't have to go through that. And if we sit and rub hands and not go to vote, there's something wrong with us mentally."
At 98, Lee says she knows firsthand that the privilege of voting has always come at a cost for women and minorities.
"I had to pay a poll tax to vote," Lee said. "I had $1.75 and had to either pay the poll tax or get food for four kids. I prayed about it and I paid the poll tax. Kids didn't go hungry. Look, voting is so important and people don't seem to understand that they have a voice. And if they don't use it, then people just trample all over them."
It is a reminder, advocates say, that freedom has never been free, and young people especially need to understand the cost of securing rights that can very easily be taken for granted.
"Listen. The Lord didn't leave me here for 98 years to sit and rock," Lee said. And then adding with a laugh, "I'm going to keep on walking and keep on talking, until somebody listens."
The Fannie Lou Hamer story is slated for a one-day performance on Sunday, Nov. 3, at the IM Terrell Performing Arts Center in Fort Worth. Tickets are available at www.unityunlimited.org.
Come to listen and learn, supporters say. Then leave with hope.
"I had a man say, 'You know, I'm an alpha male. And I cried,'" said Aimbaye. "And I had people standing, holding hands and singing. And her last thing that she says in her last song is 'love one another.'"
Yes, the play is a history lesson for some, but Aimbaye prefers to call it a "love lesson" for our troubled world.
