The monologue, “Echoes of the Past,” was presented by Maxine Maxwell, in celebration of Black History Month.

Maxwell took on the personas of five significant African and African-American women in the struggle for civil rights.

Maxwell said that it was ironic that she addressed the audience last night.  “I remember history being my worst subject.  I did not do well in history.”  She expressed the need for every generation to understand history, because, “the past has everything to do with our future.”

Maxwell portrayed slave Henrietta King, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, journalist Ida B. Wells, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, and a speaker from the courageous children in South Africa.

“In 1999, it is difficult to imagine what it was like to be a slave,” she began the King monologue.  She then contorted her face to look disabled, and told King’s story in first person of how she became disfigured.

King’s owner’s wife was not a nice woman, and after trying to punish King, she crushed her face under the rocking chair.  She became permanently disfigured from the beating.  “I couldn’t remember what it was like to chew.  It happened 86 years ago; that’s what slavery days was like,” she finished.

Maxwell took on the personality of one of the foremost crusaders against black oppression, Ida B. Wells.  Most are familiar with Wells as the first female African-American journalist, but few know that she took a stance similar to that of Rosa Parks’.  “What few people know is that Wells’ crusade began in a similar situation.”

Maxwell spun the story of Wells not giving up her seat in the ladies’ coach of a train in Memphis.  She was told to leave the train, but she refused.  Finally, after struggling with three men, she left on her own.  Wells then hired a lawyer to bring a lawsuit against the train company.  

The first lawyer, a black man, was paid off by the train company to not take the case.  The second, a white lawyer, won the case in circuit court.  
Wells was awarded $500 in damages.

Elizabeth Eckford was one of the original “Little Rock Nine,” who was heckled when she attempted to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.  Maxwell told of Eckford’s feelings when she realized that the guards would not protect her, and the relief she felt when a white man told her not to “let them see her cry.”

“Mother turned around ... I wanted to tell her I was alright, but I couldn’t.  She put her arms around me and I cried,” she said.