Hollywood clings to proven conventions, lazy as they can be, and there are few it has milked harder in recent years than the White Savior: the noble Caucasian who heroically stands up for a wronged minority. From Sandra Bullock’s generous football mom in The Blind Side to Harrison Ford’s forward-thinking baseball manager in 42 and, most egregiously, Emma Stone’s aspiring journalist in The Help— the only woman with the bravery to write about a black woman’s bravery—white protagonists tearing down the walls of inequality have served as a cheap source of inspiration while stripping black characters of agency in their own stories. So when Adam Kraar’s historical drama Freedom High introduces Jessica, a dewy-eyed white student risking everything to aid the civil rights struggle, audiences are right to be skeptical. We’ve seen this character too many times before.
Jessica may be the protagonist in Freedom High, which Milwaukee’s Uprooted Theatre staged for one night only on Nov. 18 at Next Act Theatre, but she’s a far cry from the unimpeachable white heroes of Hollywood. As depicted by April Paul, who brings great depth to a taxing role, she’s sweet and likable but also naïve and entitled, a boy-crazy Ivy Leaguer who believes she deserves a bit more gratitude in return for her efforts. As she and a team of civil rights workers train to deploy to Klan territory in rural Mississippi, the danger involved becomes clear when they learn of the disappearance of their peers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner, the real life volunteers whose 1964 murders helped spur that year’s landmark Civil Rights Act.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Even by running a modest voter registration effort, these students risked their lives—Kraar’s script reminds us repeatedly—and the characters spend much of the play confronting (or avoiding) the question of whether it’s worth it. Save for one histrionic second-act confrontation that’s out of step with the script’s contemplative tone, Freedom High ’s primary conflicts are internal. Just as Jessica and the other white volunteers consider whether their motives are truly altruistic, the campaign’s black leaders wrestle with the possibility that they’re exploiting their white recruits, setting them up as sacrificial lambs. Multiple workers compare their mission to war, and as with any war, bloodshed is inevitable. The only thing they know for certain is that their cause is noble, but beyond that, nothing is nearly so clear cut.
