History Comes Alive during One-Woman Show presented by Utah Public Radio

Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, along with six other significant African-American women, will come to life during Traveling Shoes, a one-woman show presented by Utah Public Radio at Utah State University.

Featuring professional speaker, storyteller and writer Janice Brooks, the performance is Thursday, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m. in the Caine Performance Hall on USU’s Logan campus.

The event is part of the Provost’s Series on Instructional Excellence in celebration of Black History Month and is co-sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Caine College of the Arts, Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, Office of Global Engagement, Center for Women and Gender, Access and Diversity Center and the Department of History.

The women brought to life in the 90-minute show are meant to teach, inspire and empower audiences, according to Brooks. Her performance incorporates narrative, oration, song and dance to tell the tales of the notable historical figures.

“All of these women were simply remarkable for their time and powerfully strong,” Brooks said. “They were visionary, they were leaders and they were all unafraid.”

Along with abolitionist, orator and women’s rights advocate Sojourner Truth and Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman, Traveling Shoes also highlights the lives of civil rights champions Rosa Parks, Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm.

Chisholm was the first African-American woman elected to Congress and in 1972 became the first majority-party black candidate to run for president.

Jordan was the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first southern black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rounding out the eight women’s stories featured in Traveling Shoes are those of Cathay Williams, Jane Manning and Biddy Mason.

A former slave, Williams disguised herself as a man to serve as a Buffalo Soldier in the 38th U.S. Infantry Regiment shortly after the end of the Civil War.

Born free in Connecticut during the early part of the 19th Century, Manning was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early 1840s.

Mason grew up as a slave in the Deep South before being taken to Utah and eventually California, a free state.

There is no cost to attend Traveling Shoes, however, tickets are required and available now online through the Caine College of the Arts box office. Children under the age of 8 are not permitted at the event.

For more information, see the Utah Public Radio website or call 435-797-3215.

Related links:

USU’s Utah Public Radio

USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Writer: Kristin Middaugh, CHaSS communications director, 435-797-0267, kristin.middaugh@usu.edu

Contact: Teri Guy, UPR, 435-797-3215, teri.guy@usu.edu