Do Lord Remember Me

De Jongh’s most produced play, it is a full-length memory play with music. It is a tribute to the triumphs of African Americans over slavery from emancipation through the Federal Theatre project. – The A to Z of African American Theatre

From 1936 to 1938 the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project transcribed 2,300 oral histories in 17 states, assembling a massive bank of memories called Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States. James de Jongh’s Do Lord Remember Me is derived from these first-person accounts by ex-slaves, recalled when they were in their 80s and 90s. The two-act play dramatizes about 20 of these interviews recorded by the FWP. @ThisStage