In 1881, America was just coming out of the Reconstruction period. The Civil War had ended less than 20 years before, and its awful stench still hung in the air.<\/p>\n
For former slaves, their families and their descendants, it would an uphill climb. For them, all aspects of life were new. There was nothing to reconstruct.<\/p>\n
In Georgia, a grassroots labor movement began among the Black women working as city laundresses. The Atlanta Washerwomen\u2019s Strike came to involve around 3,000 women, demanding both respect and fair wages for their backbreaking, 18-hour work days.<\/p>\n
It was a pivotal moment in American history, and a moment immortalized by playwright Kelundra Smith in her historical drama The Wash.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the fact that this story reminds us that ordinary people can do extraordinary things,\u201d says The Studio@620 artistic director Erica Sutherlin, whose production of The Wash opens Thursday and will run through Oct. 11. \u201cWhen we are tired, fed up, frustrated, over it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the era of uber-restrictive \u201cblack codes\u201d and Jim Crow laws. \u201cThere\u2019s a boom that happens \u2013 we\u2019ll put \u2018boom\u2019 in quotations \u2013 that happens after the Civil War, with Blacks being able to hold office and things like that,\u201d Sutherlin explains. \u201cBut at the same time, we\u2019re not far from slavery.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s what I want people to remember. These women were slaves; they all were born into slavery, or right at the end of it. And they found their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oppression and racism night have been more subtle by the 1880s, but things hadn\u2019t changed all that very much. \u201cTo have that desire and that gumption to want more \u2026 most of these women in our story, their husbands have died. And it\u2019s another thing to not have a man there with you.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so powerful to see these women come together collectively, across the board, to do something that is very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
An uprising by Black women would surely have been quashed quickly by the white powers-that-be.<\/p>\n
Wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
\u201cKelundra really wanted to show that these ideas, these moments, these movements are, and can be, bigger than race,\u201d says Sutherlin. \u201cWhen you had white women, and Native American women, joining this strike. Because they saw something that was greater than the color of our each individual skin. That\u2019s powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raved the New York Stage Review: \u201cThe actual struggle that galvanizes and unites these women generates a dramatic impetus that keeps The Wash\u00a0chugging along.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sutherlin insists The Wash, which is being produced in collaboration with Powerstories Theatre, is much more than a textbook, eat-your-vegetables lesson in history.<\/p>\n
\u201cKalundra did something very smart. She wrote real people. And sometimes the way we deal with history: It\u2019s past, it has this stiffness about it, we forget that people are human.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut these women are lively. It\u2019s funny. They are friends. They fight with each other. They laugh with each other, they cry with each other. They take risks together. I love that about this piece.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sutherlin, meanwhile, spent August and early September, directing her second movie for Lifetime Television. The drama One Last Shot, starring Tisha Campbell, is scheduled to air on the network Nov. 14.<\/p>\n