Family turns stoop into stage for Black history

ByDERIK WALLER Localish logo
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Family turns stoop into stage for Black history
Miles from the Broadway theaters, on a stoop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, one family is putting on a show that's all their own. The vignettes showcase America's famous civil rights icons.Miles from the Broadway theaters on a stoop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, one family is putting on a show that's all their own.

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT -- Miles from the Broadway theaters, on a stoop in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, one family is putting on a show that's all their own.

The vignettes showcase America's most famous civil rights icons. The showcase has been going on for 10 years, but the pandemic forced the Flowers family to take the show outside.

That's where founder Aaronda Flowers reprised her role as Harriet Tubman.

"I enjoy playing the character of Harriet Tubman for her endurance, what she had to endure to actually pull Black people through," Flowers said.

On folding chairs out on the sidewalk, neighbors learn about Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

There's also abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth and Emmett Till. He's the 14-year-old Mississippi child lynched in 1955 after he was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman.

"It's important to inform our community of our history so that no one will be forgotten," organizer Zahne Flowers said.

"Our Black American heroes, who fought for change, who fought for justice," an actor said in the performance.

Now, they fight to remember.