Beloved Community,
After Labor Day, arts and culture organizations unveil their seasons, announcing the who, the what, the when. Which artists will take the stage? What stories will be told with dates and times? But at a moment such as this, when the stakes are nothing less than our future, I cannot simply follow that rote blueprint.
The times are too urgent, too perilous, too volatile for convention. The times demand more than a catalog of dates, a roll call of titles, a litany of names. These times demand a fierce and radical reimagining.
And reimagining begins when we resist the ease of indifference. It is too easy to scroll past, to tune out, to say, “not my fight.” But every time we turn away, injustice deepens its roots. Silence is not neutral - it is fertile ground for oppression. We are living through the unraveling of truths once thought unshakable. Demagoguery rises. Lies dress themselves in headlines. Whole histories are being erased with the stroke of a pen.
And yet…here stand the artists.
Toni Morrison warned us: “The history of art has always been bloody, because dictators and people in office…know exactly the people who will disturb their plans. And those people are artists.”
At Harlem Stage—the stage to set untold stories free—we take Morrison’s charge to heart. We meet this moment not with routine, but with urgency. The urgency for one of humanity’s oldest and most unflinching instruments of truth: the telling of stories. And thus… Freedom Riders: A Journey with No End in Sight.
This work is not a season opener. This work is a pilgrimage.
This journey carries us through a century of America’s struggle for racial justice - from the Great Migration, when six million Black Americans fled the terror of Jim Crow, to the Freedom Riders who risked their lives to desegregate interstate travel, to the present-day Movement for Black Lives. But this work is not confined to the stage. The entire company (cast, crew, and musicians, activists all) will travel together by bus, retracing in reverse the path of the Freedom Riders and honoring the northward arc of the Great Migration. Mile after mile, over a thousand in all, becomes a living testament to solidarity, history, resistance, and resolve; carrying the spirit of those who sacrificed everything for justice, while urging us to confront the unfinished work that remains.
And the where matters as much as the what. This summer, my team at Harlem Stage and I sat inside Montgomery’s First Baptist “Brick-a-Day” Church; the very sanctuary where the Freedom Riders once sought refuge in 1961 as a 3,000-strong mob raged outside. A deacon leaned in to tell us that it was here, in their basement, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and so many others gathered to protect those who risked everything for the freedoms we too often take for granted - freedoms now being stripped away at record speed. This church is hallowed ground. And it is here that our journey will begin.
From Montgomery, the journey continues to Atlanta, Georgia, to the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center at Morehouse College within the Atlanta University Center - home also to Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University - where generations of Black leaders have been nurtured. Nearly 600 students, professors, and community members will gather to bear witness to these stories of racial injustice, carrying within them the possibility of shaping a new world, just as students before them once changed the course of history.
That same spirit will meet us in Greensboro, North Carolina, at A&T University, steps from the Woolworth lunch counter where students in 1960 dared to sit and, in so doing, stood up for a nation. There, another 900 students and community members will join us. Side by side, Atlanta and Greensboro remind us that the torch of justice has always passed through the hands of young people, who link memory to possibility.
They will not only witness Freedom Riders: A Journey with No End in Sight; they will help carry it forward. HBCU students will craft their own reflections on a new America, daring to dream beyond what is into what could be. These reflections will be shared publicly, extending the reach of the work. Along the way, communities will gather in conversations, making space for dialogue, vision, and truth-telling.
And finally, we return to Harlem - our charge, our sanctuary, our home.
Here, our NYC community will gather for 16 performances to bear witness to these stories of struggle and hope; six of those performances will be dedicated, free-of-charge, to the city’s students, inviting the next generation to step into the long continuum of justice and possibility.
Beloved community,
Freedom Riders: A Journey with No End in Sight matters because freedom is unfinished and unfinished freedom asks something of each of us. It is both remembrance and revelation, and it also marks Harlem Stage’s evolution as a cultural anchor. As the leader of this enduring 42- year-old institution, it is my charge to chart a bold vision that expands our national and global reach, while deepening our covenant with you, our New York City audiences. Because the struggle for justice requires both a local sanctuary and a national stage.
Just imagine…imagine a country where every community begins to set its own untold stories free. Where voices long silenced are finally heard, and where rising voices are welcomed without resistance. What would our neighborhoods look like if every story truly mattered? What might our nation feel like if every person was seen and heard? Who could we become, as a nation, if truth itself stood as a sacred and immovable force? That is the power of the arts; a power that must be unleashed with greater force than ever before, because the fragility of our fractured democracy is pressing against its breaking point.
This is the possibility and the promise of our journey. We are here to set untold stories free and when we do that, we do our part to shape a world where “we the people” means ALL of us.
I hope you will stand with us. Bear witness. Answer the call of this moment.
Only forward in solidarity,
Dr. Indira Etwaroo
CEO & Artistic Director, Harlem Stage
Please don’t hesitate to reach out. I look forward to hearing from you.