ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes how the Free Southern Theater promoted cultural revolution and a Black aesthetic in the Southern United States. As early as 1963, before the Black Arts and Black Power movements, the Free Southern Theater inspired audiences to social action. In 1969, when the company toured Amiri Baraka’s viscerally disturbing, immersive dramatic ritual, Slave Ship, Black participation in voter registration drives drastically rose, and multiple near riots occurred in Mississippi. These responses exemplify how, despite common renderings of Southern Blacks as downtrodden victims of white domination, African Americans in the region have a history of manifesting radical insurgency.
