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“The Colored Patriot: The Un-Erased Story of Thomas Laws” is a staged reading of a new play by Bleu Do’zia, founding artistic director of the Selah Theatre Project.Set in a contemporary courtroom, the play imagines a case in which slave Thomas Laws is represented by journalist and truth-seeker Ida B. Wells, who demands accountability for his erasure from the historical record.
Through testimony and reenactment, the court revisits Mr. Laws’ dangerous work as a Civil War spy – carrying secret messages concealed in his mouth between Union General Philip Sheridan and Quaker abolitionist Rebecca Wright – while confronting the systems that benefited from his bravery but failed to remember him.
“The Colored Patriot: The Un-Erased Story of Thomas Laws” is presented FREE at the Handley Regional Library, located at 100 W. Piccadilly St., in Winchester. Contact Selah Theatre Project at 540-684-5464 or [email protected]. Read more at www.selahtheatreproject.org
BACKGROUND:
Thomas Laws was born a slave in 1817 in present-day Clarke County. In September 1864, U.S. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan needed to confirm information about Confederate troops near Winchester. He knew a loyal Quaker school teacher named Rebecca Wright who lived in Winchester. He also knew of a slave near Berryville who had a pass to cross Confederate lines to sell vegetables in the city.
Notes were passed between the slave, the school teacher, and the Union general. As a result, the Union army won the Third Battle of Winchester, securing Union control of the city through the end of the war. General Sheridan and Rebecca Wright were celebrated. Thomas Laws lived the rest of his life in obscurity in Clarke County.
Thomas Laws and his wife Mary are buried in Milton Valley Cemetery, located at the east end of Josephine Street in Berryville, next to the Josephine School Community Museum.
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Event Venue
100 W Piccadilly St, Winchester, VA 22601-3916, United States
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