About the play

It’s 1932 in Birmingham, Alabama at the Pratt Coal mining prison, Slope No. 12. Cheeks and Odin Dean are prisoners and Ezekiel finds bones. Maybell and Vivie Eillien are prostitutes, and Green Cottenham’s spirit comes calling. In the American South, there had to be a system created to control the newly freed black population and convict labor became that solution. This here be the Pratt Coal mines, where black men are picked up for any minimum charge like spitting, talking loud in the presence of a white woman, gambling, or just “being”. In 1932, black prison labor is free, hard, and easy. They are simply slaves given a different name.