Civil rights: So history is not forgotten.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

Not long ago, playwright David Barr III was talking about civil rights in a black student union program at Gettsyburg College in Pennsylvania.

When he asked how many had personally experienced a blatantly racist act, only two students raised their hands: a lesbian who had come out and a black woman who had gone to an all-white high school.

This was not surprising to Barr, an award-winning Chicago playwright who does a lot of public speaking about racism.

``I love it when kids say they have no idea what I'm talking about,'' Barr said in telephone interview from his office in Chicago. ``I tell them it's important to know why they don't have to care about such things.

``If you don't know your history and what it took to get to this point, you become complacent and take your freedoms for granted. Kids today are not bad, they're just ignorant.''

Some young people, he says, would sum up black history as, ``Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, then we invented rap and now we have the NBA.''

Barr, a 41-year-old African-American who believes that his own generation hasn't done all that much to advance the cause of civil rights, is doing what he can to educate the younger generation, both white and black.

His new play, "My Soul Is a Witness," is now on a 40-city U.S. tour that began Jan. 15 in Oxford, Miss., and includes a performance Friday night in Eugene, in the Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall.

In the show, which is billed as historical fiction and which includes both gospel and protest music, five New York actors play some 20 parts.

Many of the characters are household names: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John Kennedy and others. Others are less familiar: Mamie Till Mobley, Elizabeth Eckford, Maxine McNair.

To tell the full story of the struggle for civil rights, Barr believes it is important to introduce audiences to some of the "faceless people" who were involved.

Those would include Mobley, whose 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, was murdered for being disrespectful to a white woman while visiting his uncle in Mississippi in 1955.

They also would include not only Eckford, a 15-year-old girl who came terrifyingly close to being lynched on live TV at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957, but also the kind white person who helped her get to a bus and safely away from a mob that was threatening her.

And they would include McNair, whose daughter was one of the girls killed in the bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church in 1963.

"Family members were devastated," Barr says, "and never went on to do anything in life except mourn that child. It wasn't just the child who died."

Although Barr wants audiences to meet and care about all the characters, both famous and less so, he is more interested in education than illusion.

"I don't want them to forget that these are actors, real people telling a real story," he says. "They are witnesses, which means they are on stage to confirm this history. I want the audience to focus on the words, man.

``These are complicated issues, and the actors talk about them in complicated ways."

Barr himself has complicated views about racism.

He grew up in a small Virginia town when segregation was still legal, but he attended a Catholic elementary school where segregation was not practiced.

"My parents were the same way," he says, "so my growing up was a multi-cultured, multi-rainbowed experience."

Barr's plays include "The Death of the Black Jesus," "A Red Death" (adapted from a novel by Walter Mosley), "Black Caesar," ``Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit'' (based on the life of singer Marian Anderson) and ``The State of Mississippi vs. Emmett Till'' (developed in cooperation with Mamie Till Mobley).

Barr expresses little sympathy for people "who make racism an industry" and "run the R flag up over everybody's head" at the slightest provocation.

Although he thinks it's counter-productive to see racists and oppressors behind every rock, ``sometimes they're really there, and you've gotta call them out.''

And African-Americans are not the only targets and victims of racism, Barr adds.

The JENA Company, a New York theatrical licensing and publishing organization in New York, commissioned Barr to write a civil rights history play after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks unleashed anti-Arab and anti-Jewish bias that shocked JENA producer John Adams, whom Barr describes as "a flame-throwing, bleeding heart liberal from Boston."

Barr says he himself heard "reprehensibly racist, abhorrent" sentiments coming "from people I thought were with me" on the question of racism.

He says it has been an enriching, fulfilling experience for him to write a drama that takes a balanced look at the dangers of racism, with contemporary tie-ins, and to talk with students and community groups about the issues raised, which he does when invited.

Although he has an acting background, Barr does not perform in this show.

``When I started out as an actor I looked like Denzel. Now I look like Cedric,'' he says, chuckling. "They wouldn't let me up there."

``My Soul Is a Witness'' is directed by Joy Vandervort-Cobb, whose credits include ``Black Broadway'' and national tours of ``For Colored Girls ...'' and ``From the Mississippi Delta.''

The tour has received support from the Western States Arts Federation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

PREVIEW

My Soul Is a Witness

What: A civil rights drama by David Barr III

When: 8 p.m. Friday

Where: Hult Center, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street

How much: $18 to $26 for adults, $12 for students and youths (682-5000 or www.hultcenter.org)

CAPTION(S):

One scene in ``My Soul Is a Witness'' has Stephen Graybill (left) and Andrew Cooksey act out the kidnapping of Emmett Till, who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955. The touring play, billed as ``historical fiction'' about the civil rights struggle, will be staged in Eugene on Friday.