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More than 10,000 sign online petition to cancel Emmett Till opera
New York Daily NewsDays before it’s set to open to the public, a new opera centered on slain civil rights movement figure Emmett Till has caused an uproar at a New York City college.
The production, written by Clare Coss and composed by Mary D. Watkins, is scheduled to perform at John Jay College’s Gerald W. Lynch Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday.
But not if Mya Bishop has her way — the John Jay College student launched the public protest to have the plug pulled on the ambitious opera.
“Clare Coss has creatively centered her white guilt by using this play to make the racially motivated brutal torture and murder of a 14-year-old child about her white self and her white feelings,” Bishop wrote in the petition about the 86-year-old librettist, who is white. “Telling the story from the perspective of a fictional progressive white woman shows that Clare Coss is more concerned with showing the audience that ‘not all white people are bad’ than she is with the ongoing fight for racial justice."
The production, written by Clare Coss and composed by Mary D. Watkins, is scheduled to perform at John Jay College’s Gerald W. Lynch Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday.
But not if Mya Bishop has her way — the John Jay College student launched the public protest to have the plug pulled on the ambitious opera.
“Clare Coss has creatively centered her white guilt by using this play to make the racially motivated brutal torture and murder of a 14-year-old child about her white self and her white feelings,” Bishop wrote in the petition about the 86-year-old librettist, who is white. “Telling the story from the perspective of a fictional progressive white woman shows that Clare Coss is more concerned with showing the audience that ‘not all white people are bad’ than she is with the ongoing fight for racial justice."