For The Love OF Liberation

Calvin J Worthen is the Streetcorner Storyteller in this performance of For the Love of Liberation, Meet up at the corner to hear Mr Worthen tell The stories of a Goat Herder and His Goat, The King and the Skat, and Crabs In A Barrel. For the Love of Liberation is a tribute to the Black Renaissance, the name given to the surge of artistic expression, community organizing and social activity in Chicago’s “Black Belt” community.  Due to redlining, Black owned storefronts and house store porches became the place to “hear tell a tale” giving birth to the Streetcorner Storytellers. In the 1930s, the “Black Belt” existed as a narrow 40- block-long corridor running along both sides of State Street on Chicago’s South Side overcrowded chain of neighborhoods. It was an unexplainable phenomena, something you had to experience in person, and in this performance, Calvin J Worthen brings us all back to the corner. 

Runtime 45 minutes

Up to 90 minutes with Q & A

Diversity Program Description

Calvin J Worthen, M.Ed was born in a redlined area on the Southside of Chicago where the corner was as The Last Poets said, “Our testimony to freedom”. This performance honors the long list of Streetcorner Storytellers known and unknown.

Our storylines reinforce our schemas and in Chicago, we wanted freedom, freedom from oppressors both systematically and institutionally. Telling stories provided a way for us to experience freedom amongst kinfolk. With fear and injustice, this art form was destroyed by white supremacy, Jim Crow, and gentrification. This art form of public gatherings generated a frequency that materialized our freedom, hopes, pains, and dreams. By the early 1980’s, the “Broken Windows” policing practices that targeted minor offenses like loitering, made it illegal for Black people to hold on to this sacred communal practice. It was an unexplainable phenomena, something you had to experience in person in this performance, Calvin J Worthen brings us all back to the corner. 

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Host or Publisher Calvin J Worthen