ACTORS in the play GEM of THE OCEAN
Black playwright AUGUST WILSON, called this play Gem of The Ocean. If you have seen this play, see it again for there are new lessons to be learned.
Africans sold their own to slave owners, who ferried their catch across the Atlantic, to work mercilessly on sugar and cotton plantations.
The British abolitionists found the process villainous and God defying. Eventually Abraham LINCOLN came along, and thus came about the UNION ARMY. The slaves were now boarding a new boat, with the promise of 40 acres and a mule, per household. Lincoln was shot dead. The slaves then rode in another boat, looking for that escape route, that later came in 1964 with the passing in Congress of the Civil Rights Act.
Every time slaves got in a boat, someone had to be the “GEM”; the unnamed, unannounced but understood leader of the slaves, who carried names as colored, negro, black, and African American.
Thousands died on each journey. There are bones at the bottom of the literal sea, in the fields of cotton, sugar, dirt roads and back alleys.
Watching GEM of THE OCEAN can make you cry, angry or scream in silence.
The play runs throughout April ’24, at ARENA PLAYERS, Baltimore.