Grant Awarded: November 2006

Type of Grant: We the People Grant

Sponsor: University of Detroit, Mercy

Contact: Arthur Beer, beeraj@udmercy.edu

Website: www.udmercy.edu

Award: $14,742

The University of Detroit Mercy Theatre Company will tour a condensed version of the play, Malice Aforethought: The Sweet Trials, to several underserved locations statewide during May 2007. The touring version of the play will be 50 minutes long, will use Equity actors to ensure high artistic standards, and will be accompanied by an historical exhibit and a humanities scholar as a moderator.

The play tells the story of Dr. Ossian Sweet and his friends and family who were arrainged for murder in 1925 when they fired on a White mob attempting to drive them from their home. Judge Frank Murphy (later Governor and Attorney General) heard the case, and Clarence Darrow led a team of Black and White attorneys to an historic acquittal. It remains Michigan's most famous Civil Rights case and is the major legal precedent for residential segregation.

The production will be the centerpiece of a project that includes lectures, panel discussions, a traveling historical exhibit, a reading program through libraries, and a social studies curricular program in schoools, with student matinees. The discussions will be moderated by humanities scholars and may be videotaped.