New Haven Independent

The performance, by writer and actor Mike Wiley, was sponsored by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut. It took place Thursday.

Wiley (pictured with an audience member he brought into the performance) acted out the parts of a score of players, taking their exact words from speeches and articles — the kind of documentary theater made famous by Anna Deveare Smith. He portrayed the attorneys on both sides of the U.S. Supreme Court case; Oliver Brown, the father of Linda Brown, the lead defendant in the case; as well as people whose struggles and court battles led up to the historic 1954 decision and some who have spoken in more recent times about the re-segregation of schools.

The aldermanic chamber at City Hall was filled with high schoolers from schools throughout the region, a tough audience. He succeeded in winning most of them over with his varied performances and his humor that broke through as he made off-the-cuff jokes. He brought eight students and teachers to the front to act as silent colleagues to his Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren character.

In another vignette, he brought up a man to play a black graduate student who was admitted to the University of Oklahoma, but was barred from classrooms and could only listen to lectures from out in the hall. The audience, including Jamar Hailey of Hamden High (pictured), erupted in laughter as Wiley kept moving the man’s chair farther and farther away from “center stage,” until it was outside the chamber door, which he firmly shut.

That man sued the university and succeeded in overturning its segregationist policy — a precursor to the Brown v. Board lawsuit.

Click here for his enactment of the attorney representing the Topeka Board of Education, who insisted, “Segregation is not harmful to black children — no!”

Wiley also spoke in the voice of Gary Orfield, a rsocial scientist who has been an expert witness promoting school desegregation in many court cases: “Desegregation reached its peak during the late 1980s, but over the last 15 years, the trend has moved in the opposite direction…if this trend is not reversed, we could easily find ourselves back where we were 40 years ago.” Click here for more.

Before and after his performance, the Hill Regional Career High School gospel choir sang.

After the performance, Wiley told his listeners that, growing up poor in southwestern Virginia, he always wanted to be an actor. He said he didn’t wait for a director to tell him he was right for a certain part. Instead, he created his own one-man plays and has successfully marketed them to schools and other audiences around the country. He urged the students not to accept no for an answer as they pursue their dreams.

Brandon Zanders of Coop High School (pictured at top) was impressed. “I think it was amazing how he brought it back from back then and broke it down as to how things was. It was amazing how he changed voices. I felt like I was there.”

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