“Double V” campaign fought racism at home and fascism aboard during World War II.
If you’re at least somewhat aware of America’s tortured history of racism and the civil rights movement that has fought against it, you’ve heard of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat for a white passenger. You know that Emmitt Till’s mother insisted that photographs of her son’s mutilated body be distributed coast to coast. March on Washington, Edmund Pettis Bridge, Brown v. Board of Education—yes, all of that.
But what do you know about the Army desegregating its ranks starting in the early days of World War II.
Now playing at the International City Theater in Long Beach, Carole Eglash-Kosoff’s “The Double V” provides a compelling, real-life look at the local activism and community journalism that forced a resistant military and white society in general to change.
Based on a real-life Black teenage factory worker, Jimmy Thompson (KJ Powell) desperately wants to serve his country during the war's darkest days in 1942, when fascist German and Japanese armies were on the march. But at the local recruitment center in hometown Wichita, Kansas, he’s ridiculed, abused, and ultimately beaten by soldiers there.
But Jimmy has grit. Despite cautions to leave well enough alone, he writes a letter to the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading Black newspaper. At first, managing editor Ira Lews (Nic Few) leaves the letter on the tall stack of other similar letters. But eager junior reporter Madge Evans (Jennifer Shelton)—actually more of a clerk and wannabe reporter–takes it upon herself to travel to Wichita to interview Jimmy and his family.
Her report that the Courier’s editor ultimately, if grudgingly, publishes stirs up a hornet’s nest, with enough stings to overcome burning crosses, bricks tossed through windows, and repeated FBI threats. The Double V campaign—Victory overseas against fascism, Victory at home against racism—catches hold with the public and forces the goernment’s hand.
“It took the activism of that one young man and the bravery of the editor and reporters at The Pittsburgh Courier to change the system,” reports playwright Eglash-Kosoff. “We take that kind of activism for granted today, but then, in 1942, it was totally revolutionary.”
As a historical recreation of this civil rights advance, “Double V” is a clear, well-acted, rather heartwarming adventure, triumphant in showing that Jimmy and three other Black players were able to join the war effort. But because it hews so close to actual events, some of the play’s emotion that must have accompanied this difficult conflict is muted. For example, the story is leavened with two—apparently real-life—romances that are less than, well, romantic.
Joining Jennifer Shelton, Nick Few, and KJ Powell on this excellent cast are Nicolette Ellis as Jimmy’s girlfriend, Idress Degas as his father, John E. Phillips as the white factory foreman, and Lee James as the FBI agent carrying out J. Edgar Hoover’s racist directives.
See Ed Rampell's review here: "Fighting Racism on Two Fronts."
The Double V is being performed Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2:00 p.m., through Sept. 8 at INTERNATIONAL CITY THEATRE, Beverly O’Neill Theater, Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center, 330 East Seaside Way, Long Beach, CA 90802. Info: (562)436-4610 or here.
