Theater scraps play about KKK rally

<p>Once the streets of the black Shermantown neighborhood in this Atlanta suburb echoed with racial epithets during incendiary rallies that drew thousand of Ku Klux Klan members.</p><p>The gatherings ended in the mid-1980s, but the community remains sensitive about the odd legacy that the cross-burning Klansmen have left their neighborhood.</p><p>Theater owners decided this week to drop a play called "Shermantown _ Baseball, Apple Pie and the Klan," which depicted a particularly hate-filled 1940 rally.</p><p>David Thomas, director of the Art Station theater, said he pulled the production after his board agreed the play was in bad taste.</p><p>"The language in the monologue is not only racy, it's inciting, and slanderous about Jews and Catholics," said Thomas, who had first agreed to stage the play but then backed down after reading the opening monologue.</p><p>The play tells the story of a visiting insurance salesman who stumbles across Shermantown the night of the annual Klan rally and examines how black residents eventually came to peacefully coexist with event. The rallies, first held atop Stone Mountain and later moved to a pasture at the granite rock's base, were staged by local resident James R. Venable, the former imperial wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.</p><p>"This is not shocking language to (residents) because they heard the same language over language coming over loudspeakers" during the rallies, said playwright Calvin Ramsey. He added that he's searching for another venue for his play.</p><p>The Rev. William Morris, who has lived in Shermantown 77 years, said he is perplexed by the theater's decision. "There's nothing offensive about it," he said. "It's the way it was."</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cd5b24)</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2005/7/141839