The War at Home (Ticket)
$ 25.00
This is a story of how America lost World War II. Jesse Thornton returns from WWII to face a harsh reality — he will never taste the freedom he risked his life for abroad. America is the same: mob lynchings, Jim Crow segregation, separate but unequal schools, and racial terrorism. Based on the true story of Jesse Thornton, as investigated by the Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Project in Boston, MA — the play tells the story of a black veteran, chicken farm manager, who was killed by a white police officer for refusing to call him “Mr.” The War at Home considers the history of black soldiers who fought for freedoms abroad that they would never experience at home, it recalls the untold sacrifices of black women who were not honored as Rosie the Riveter’s yet who worked and sacrificed just as much if not more, and a country grasping for answers to the question: what is democracy in for the Negro?
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Director’s Statement
There’s nothing new about The War at Home. The roots of an unequal, divided America — an America that treats African Americans as second-class citizens — stems from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. In the 1940s, unequal treatment for African Americans remained embedded in the fabric of American legal, educational, and social systems. Against the backdrop of a war abroad, African American soldiers began to fight against inequalities overseas that made them aware of the need to resist injustices at home. Serving and fighting to protect their country and American values was an act of ownership. But it was unsettling. They saw that while their country could create opportunities for white and black Americans to fight alongside one another abroad, officers of the law were intent on violently oppressing their rights at home. In this way, I believe World War II sealed America as “home”. The change brought about by the war was that these soldiers came home knowing they weren’t anyone’s property – these were men and women and fighting for home.
