22nd Annual Chautauqua Fills Big Tent at Bonne Terre
The large tent at the annual Chautauqua performances July 14-16 at Bonne Terre were filled all three nights as large crowds turned out to hear portrayals of Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev, former President Richard Nixon, and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
King was represented by Marvin Jefferson, an acting teacher at Bloomfield College. As King, Jefferson used a sermon format to preach his views against the “bad” War in Vietnam which he contrasted with the “good” War on Poverty. King, in real life, believed that our national leaders had their priorities all wrong—that we were spending $500,000 for every Viet Cong soldier killed in that war while at the same time we were spending a miserly $53 to help each poor person in this nation.
King was born in Atlanta in 1929 and raised by his parents, the Rev. and Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr., in a middle-class community. As he grew up, King was optimistic about the worth and dignity of African-American people. By 1954 he was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Al, where he would move into the forefront of what became known as “the second American Revolution” that led him from the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) to the Poor People’s campaign in1967-68.
Marvin Jefferson has also portrayed King at other Chautauqua performances held around the nation.
King was represented by Marvin Jefferson, an acting teacher at Bloomfield College. As King, Jefferson used a sermon format to preach his views against the “bad” War in Vietnam which he contrasted with the “good” War on Poverty. King, in real life, believed that our national leaders had their priorities all wrong—that we were spending $500,000 for every Viet Cong soldier killed in that war while at the same time we were spending a miserly $53 to help each poor person in this nation.
King was born in Atlanta in 1929 and raised by his parents, the Rev. and Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr., in a middle-class community. As he grew up, King was optimistic about the worth and dignity of African-American people. By 1954 he was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Al, where he would move into the forefront of what became known as “the second American Revolution” that led him from the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) to the Poor People’s campaign in1967-68.
Marvin Jefferson has also portrayed King at other Chautauqua performances held around the nation.
