Atlanta Playwright Pearl Cleage Reflects On 1968

April 3rd, 2018

You can have national recognition and remain a local treasure. Atlanta playwright Pearl Cleage is a case in point.

A prolific author and acclaimed playwright, Cleage is the Alliance Theatre’s Mellon Playwright in Residence. As part of WABE’s ATL68 series, she joined host Lois Reitzes to reflect on the year 1968.

Cleage grew up in Detroit, surrounded by activism, which she says grounded her in community.

“May parents were very open to whatever we wanted to do professionally,” she says, “but they were very clear that whatever those choices were should be grounded in trying to move the African American community forward.

“I was always very aware that when I was writing poetry, it was part of a movement of people toward freedom.”

Cleage says that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew her father and that she had the opportunity to meet him when he passed through Detroit. She heard of his death on the radio in her dorm room at Howard University.

“We all ran out into the hallway and people were crying, we were just unable to really wrap our minds around what had happened. And almost immediately, the rioting started in Washington. And Howard is right in the middle of inner-city Washington DC,” she says. “There was a big explosion—there was a bread factory on the opposite side of our campus. We watched it explode and go up in flames. The police came and there was tear gas all over the place.

“So we were really saddened and almost hysterical because of what had happened. But we also were frightened now for ourselves, because what do you do? You’re in the middle of a campus that’s in the middle of a riot. It felt like there were so many assassinations at that time—Dr. King, Malcom X, the Kennedys, the three Civil Rights workers, Medgar Evers—and my father was such a visible activist that I was really terrified for my father.

“People think about riots in an abstract way,” Cleage explains, “being in a riot is an emotional explosion. It’s not a revolution where people have planned it. It is an explosion of absolute despair. It was terrifying.”