(1998) Pegasus Players Theatre, 1998, directed by Jonathan Wilson. Joseph Jefferson Award: “Best New Play, Chicago, 1999.” Theatre in the Square, Atlanta, directed by Anders Cato, 2000.
[Excerpt]
(JIM, an African-American man in his 50s, a witness and asuspect in a child murder that occurred approximately 25 years before, is in the same prison in which he was interrogated in the previous case. He has been arrested on a gambling charge. He writes a letter to his female companion)
JIM
My darling Annie Maud. Today is judgment day. I went before the man this morning. Thirty days, for playing poker, if you can believe that. Or thirty dollars, which he knows I ain’t got since the cops stole all the money on the table when they arrested me. Some white man offered to pay my fine. Said he was a reporter back during that Leo Frank trial and wanted to ask me a couple of questions. I told him real polite like he could kiss my ass. It strike me as funny that there is still people running around after all these years trying to dig up something that’s dead and buried. But setting here in this cell in the same place where Dorsey and his men sweated me that summer of 1913, I must admit it’s been on my mind, too. Not that my conscience is bothering me none because I told what I knew about that thing in the witness chair. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And the truth ain’t nothing except what some white folks happen to decide it is right then. And they always changing their minds. They might decide tomorrow it was Jim done it, and they’d all start talking about justice, real righteous like. Of course, they forget about justice for they own kind. Like the ones that took Frank out of they own jail and hung him up like a cookie on a Christmas tree. Now, the Hebrews, they more confused than the white folks because they think when the man start talking about justice and the whole truth and the punishment fitting to the crime he talking about the Ten Commandments, like everybody suddenly included. We was raised with Pharoah. We know how hard his heart is. The river is already red with our blood, and if I get the chance I’ll add a little of his, just like Moses did, and deny it to the day I die. But I did not kill that girl. I did not kill that child, so help me God, Annie Maud. Signed, Your Man, Jim.