Episode 1: Summer

Blackbirds: Volume 1

The McCrays are a typical Black family in Dernier, LA, but as summer begins circa 1956, just months before the Civil Rights Movement kicks into full gear, fate will change the family forever.

Notes: The opening is still hard for me to listen to. According to the NAACP, from 1882-1968, there were 4,743 recorded lynchings in the United States. Who knows how many went unrecorded. The methods were brutal. Black men and women and children were hanged, burned, dragged and drowned.

Sadly in many instances, their bodies then became exhibition as lynching parties posed for pictures near their handiwork. In some cases, parts of the body were taken as souvenirs.

I wanted to capture the impacts of that violence and put all the pain and anguish in one character.

I wrote it, but Sabah's Sabah El-Amin made it come alive. Her voice is haunting and tragic as she does the opening.

From there, opening a window into this family was easy, but the lynching never left me as I was writing.

As a child I was plagued by nightmares from my own family tragedy. I know what it's like to be haunted.

For more information on lynchings visit: https://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/

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