“Many of us know a good deal about what we might call the signature events of the midcentury Black freedom struggle — the events that have been “iconized” in photographs,” says Paige McGinley, associate professor of performing arts and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Humanities. Images of nonviolent direct actions such as sit-ins at Nashville lunch counters and the Selma march illustrate dramatic moments of confrontation. “But what is less well known is how ordinary people prepared to do extraordinary things,” she says. With her new book project “Rehearsing Civil Rights,” McGinley is writing the first in-depth investigation of the ethos and culture of rehearsal — from nationwide civil defense drills to improvisation training for labor organizers — that was embedded within the Black freedom struggle from the early 1930s to the late 1960s. Using the theories and methods of performance studies, she shines new light on key debates that continue to frame movement scholarship.
