Not in Our Neighborhood! | History Theatre

Not in Our Neighborhood!

Streaming Friday, August 7- Thursday, August 13, 2020

 
 

Written by Tom Fabel and Eric Wood

Directed by Richard D. Thompson

Video editing by Kathy Maxwell

Content Warning: Racism, racist slurs, cross burning

1924.  All-new version.  This drama recounts the horrific events and shameful history of housing segregation in St. Paul’s Groveland Park neighborhood. William and Nellie Francis, both civil rights advocates and leading citizens in St. Paul’s growing African-American community, dared to move from their home in the Rondo neighborhood to the “home of their dreams” in this all-white neighborhood. Little did they know, neighbors would burn a cross in their front yard in an attempt to terrorize them and force them to abandon their dreams.

William Francis, a downtown attorney and Republican Party activist who would go on to become U.S. minister to Liberia, and his politically active wife Nellie Francis were black. They lived at 606 St. Anthony Ave. before purchasing the home at 2092 Sargent Ave. However, their new neighbors objected to their living in the area, touching off a series of racial incidents that revealed the depths whites would go to fight racial integration in St. Paul.

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To learn more about Nellie and William Francis

From the Artistic Director

For most white Americans, we take home ownership for granted. It’s one of the primary ways we pass on wealth from one generation to another. For most of our country’s history, people of color have been shutout, stopped and denied this opportunity.

For centuries, inequities and discrimination in housing based on race and gender represent another sad chapter in our nation’s history.

Thank you playwrights for bringing these stories into the light of day.

 

 

 

 

From the Playwrights

This play accurately recounts a particularly deplorable episode in the shameful history of residential segregation in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the remarkable courage of one family in fighting that condition.

The year is 1924, the location is the then-recently developed Groveland Park neighborhood in St. Paul, and the heroes in this saga are William and Nellie Francis, both of whom were leading citizens in St. Paul’s African-American community and nationally recognized activists in advocating civil and political rights for women and citizens of color. William Francis, an attorney, concluded his career, before his untimely death in 1929, as United States Consul and Minister to the Republic of Liberia, just the second African-American to hold such high diplomatic position.

The play begins and ends at the funeral of William Francis at the historic Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul on August 11, 1929, while the events of 1924 are presented as flash-back history. That history and the lives of the Francises were well recorded by historian Paul Nelson in the Winter, 2017 edition of Ramsey County History. The playwrights gratefully acknowledge their reliance upon that research, and also upon research done by Mitchell-Hamline Law School Professor Douglas Heidenreich, who authored an earlier article on William Francis for that school’s magazine.

While these events occurred in 1924, this episode should not be regarded as ancient history. De facto segregation continued to dominate the residential history of both St. Paul and Minneapolis through and beyond the middle of the twentieth century, the effects of which continue to be reflected in housing patterns to the present day.
— Tom Fabel and Eric Wood

Cast

Nellie Griswold Francis - Aimee K. Bryant*

William T. Francis - Darius Dotch*

Sheriff Wagner, Wallace Greer - Bruce Abas

Commissioner Clancy, Quicy Haas - Brandon Holscher

Pastor Harris, Dr. Valdo Turner - Rex Isom 

Mrs. Hass, Mayor’s Secretary - Karen Weber

Judge John W. Willis, George Olson - Carl Schoenborn*

Mayor Arthur E. Nelson - Edwin Strout

Oscar Arneson, Secretary Kellogg - Fred Wagner*

Artistic Team

Playwrights - Tom Fabel and Eric Woods

Director - Richard D. Thompson

Video Editor - Kathy Maxwell

Stage Manager - Wayne Hendricks

* denotes a Member of Actors' Equity Association

+ denotes a Member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Inc.

Special Thanks

Ashley Clark-Jackson, Hamline University Theatre, Concordia University Theatre, Augsburg University

Time & Place

August 11, 1929. Pilgrim Baptist Church, St. Paul, Minnesota