The Hart Leadership Program’s very own Bob Korstad may soon be seeing his name in lights.
The Labor Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit cultural arts organization in DC that works to strengthen the labor movement through the use of music and arts, has taken Korstad’s 2003 book Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South and adapted it into a musical.
The show, entitled Love Songs From The Liberation Wars: the 1940s Tobacco Workers’ Struggle, tells the story of an early victory against Jim Crow in the 1940s. Directed by Elise Bryant and with music by Steve Jones, the musical is described as a”jazz opera,” its songs consisting of a mix of jazz, blues, and folk styles.
The show will premiere at the Tommy Douglas Conference Center in Silver Spring, Maryland on Thursday, March 30th. Learn more about the show at its GoFundMe page here. Tickets to the show can be purchased here.