Harvard guy shares his Jim Crow schooling
Phillip Sparer, Staff Reporter
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At 8 p.m. Thursday, February 16, 2006, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s came to Regis in the stories and gospel hymns of John Perdew's one act play, "Education of a Harvard Guy." In his autobiographical account, Perdew recalls his travels from undergraduate life at Harvard University to the jails and courtrooms of segregated southwestern Georgia.
Perdew begins the play musing how vividly he remembers events that took place over four decades ago, remembering it not like it was yesterday, but "as if it as if it were seconds ago." Perdew describes leaving Harvard during his junior year to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in attempts to assist Georgia blacks register to vote.
The play chronicles the tale of how Perdew, a white Denver native, traded his comfortable academic setting for three months in jail and charges for insurrection, an obscure but potentially capital offense, in 1963. Perdew was beaten by a mob an arrested several times as he helped black citizens gain the right to vote.
Perdew and his three companions fasted for three weeks during their first stint in jail. On this time he reflected, "Except for food, we ate heartily" on thoughts of faith and the worthiness of their cause.
On summoning the strength for confrontations with good-old-boys in the Jim Crow South, Perdew had to recall his sense of purpose. "I was newsworthy," Perdew comments further. "I had not come to the South to be a chicken."
Interwoven within Perdew's recollections are the snippets of traditional African-American freedom hymns sung by a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Singers, Rutha Harris.
Although the set consists only of a PVC pipe jail cell, podium and a "Register to Vote" picket sign, the stage is filled with Perdew's passion for civil rights and a sense of the injustice and ignorance that poisoned southwest Georgia.
The son of a University of Denver professor and a graduate of Denver North High School, Perdew has spent the past 34 years living in southwest Georgia. His most recent endeavors in civil rights have been helping black farmers in rural Georgia organize co-ops and unions. At his wife's behest, Perdew decided to turn his stories into a "dramatic memoir." Perdew, with the help of playwright and Albany State University Emeritus Professor of Fine Arts Curtis L. Williams, began performing "Education of a Harvard Guy" in October 2005.