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Carridder M. Jones

Writer Carridder M. Jones' first work was published in 1990. Married with six children, Jones worked mostly in human resources, landing at the University of Louisville, where she began taking theater and writing classes in the late 1980s. Her education as a young girl in Timmonsville, S.C., began in a three-room schoolhouse where children of slaves and sharecroppers had attended before her.

Beginning with poetry and short stories, Jones later found her voice as a
playwright. Her first play, "Lady of the House," was produced in the small Martin Experimental Theater at the Kentucky Center, a three-night run that sold out. Her plays also have been part of the Juneteenth Festival at Actors Theatre. Themes in her work include early African-American culture and contemporary society.

In 1993, Jones started a literary society for women, Women Who Write, to
encourage women interested in writing. She has been awarded grants by the U of L Women's Center, the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Pilgrim Project of New York. She also has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar.


March 25, 2009

Author sheds light on black history

By Martha Elson
melson@courier-journal.com

From her picture window on the sixth floor of The Glenview high-rise condominiums overlooking Brownsboro Road, writer and historian Carridder "Rita" Jones can see about half way to the Locust Grove historic site.

The home, where she now works part time, is three miles away — the same distance she walked each way to and from school growing up on her family's sharecropper farm in South Carolina.

Today, Jones, 73, is a weekend manager, African-American history specialist and tour guide at Locust Grove, built in 1790 by relatives of George Rogers Clark. She has published a new book titled "A Backward Glance" that's sold there — a fictionalized collection of stories about growing up in South Carolina.

She's also developing a tour at Locust Grove that will focus on the lives of slaves in Kentucky, like those who would have worked at Locust Grove.

"Slaves were very important to the economy of this region and to Locust Grove," Carol Ely, the home's executive director, said. "Most of the people who lived on this land were enslaved people."

Jones lived on a farm in Timmonsville, S.C., about 85 miles north of Charleston, with her parents and two sisters until she was about 17. As a girl, she asked for books for Christmas, not dolls, and her mother saw that she had them, Jones said.

"I would like for people to know what life was like back in those days," she said.

The book's introduction says that a sharecropper was dependent on the farm's owner to feed and clothe his family. If the crop was not good, the sharecropper could sink deeper into debt. As the main character, based on Jones, grew up, "she decided she would much rather be a shareholder than a sharecropper."

After leaving the farm in South Carolina, Jones married, had six children and traveled to such distant places as the Great Wall of China and Morocco with her husband, who was in the military.

Life on the farm gave her a special understanding of the lives of people growing up in rural black communities, she said. She also has done extensive research and collaborated on a public radio program about black "hamlets" around Lexington, where blacks worked on horse farms.

She also has done research for the Filson Historical Society about African Americans living in Jefferson County in such areas as Newburg, Jeffersontown, Berrytown, and the James Taylor subdivision off River Road.

Jones said she has long been interested in history and began writing short stories, poems and plays when she took a job in employment management at the University of Louisville in the late 1980s — and began taking classes in English and theater arts at U of L. She also had worked in a human resources management position at The Courier-Journal.

In 1993, she co-founded a women's literary society called Women Who Write at the U of L Women's Center. The group now meets monthly at the Highlands-Shelby Park branch library in the Mid City Mall.

Now retired for about a decade, Jones has written a new play titled "Voice of the Fugitive," about Kentucky slave and freed man Henry Bibb, which will be presented by The Oldham County Historical Society May 29-31 at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Her new 10-minute play titled "A Real Mother Goose Tale" (about the "Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe") also will be presented by Finnigan Productions at a play festival April 16-18 and 23-25 at the Rudyard Kipling in Old Louisville.

Jones said that people from all over the world visit Locust Grove and that her position there gives her a chance to help enlighten them about aspects of African-American history.

"""There is so much of it out there that is not discussed," she said.

May 20, 2009

Slave's tale of abuse, success on stage

Oldham HistoryCenter is sponsor

By Andrea Uhde
auhde@courier-journal.com

It's one of Oldham County's most romantic and most tragic love stories: two slaves who fall in love but are separated, and only one ever tastes freedom.

That slave was Henry Bibb, who was born between September 1813 and August 1814 just south of New Castle and later escaped north to become a popular anti-slavery speaker and Canada's first black newspaper editor. He also wrote an autobiography in 1849, detailing the brutality of slavery.

Next week Bibb's story will be shown for the first time as a play at Actors Theatre of Louisville. The play, "Voice of the Fugitive," was written by local playwright and African-American historian Carridder M. Jones.

"We're trying to get the story of Henry Bibb's life out because he was an important citizen of his time, and he has an interesting story," said Nancy Theiss, executive director of the Oldham County History Center, which worked to get funding for the play. "He's a historic character and figure that really has never been celebrated."

The play will last under an hour, and performances will be held May 29-31. Tickets are $8.

The History Center is using a $3,200 grant from the Kentucky Arts Council to rent the theater for the performances and $1,000 from the Owsley Brown Charitable Foundation to pay for other expenses including the actors. The play features three actors from the University of Louisville's fine arts program.

Jones, of eastern Louisville, said she's written about five plays, and this one will give people a "chance to explore history, and to share it with others."

"It's a true story, and I've tried to let Henry Bibb's words stand out throughout the script," she said.

The play will show some of the brutality of slavery, she said.

Scenes of abuse are spread throughout Bibb's autobiography, including details of the beating of his daughter Mary Frances by "an unmerciful old mistress" while he and his wife, Malinda, worked on the 320-acre Bedford Plantation, at the time located in Oldham County but now in Trimble.

Bibb ran away in the winter of 1837, but returned for his family the next spring. On their third attempt to escape, the family was caught and tossed into a workhouse in Louisville.

After being switched from one master to another over the years, Bibb eventually escaped to Detroit. He spent weeks learning to read, and began sharing his story at conventions and in newspaper columns.

After learning that Malinda had become a mistress of a slave owner, he married a Cincinnati schoolteacher and they moved to Canada, where Bibb started a newspaper named Voice of the Fugitive.

The newspaper became a force for black freedom. But in 1853, the printing plant was destroyed in a fire, which Bibb thought was arson.

He died almost a year later after suffering a high fever. He was about 40.

Thiess said she'd like to see a national trail from New Orleans to Canada that details Bibb's travels. The History Center, which has been pushing for the trail, has been working for several years on an archaeological project at the Bedford plantation where Bibb lived, and Theiss said it hopes to make that part of the trail.

She said no funding for a trail has been secured.

In the meantime, the play will highlight Bibb's story, Theiss said. The project is "kind of outside of the box" for the History Center, she said.

"It's the first time we've done something like this on this grand a scale," she said. "This is a real opportunity to see history through the eyes of Henry Bibb."

May 29, 2009

Slave's life told in play

History group brings 'Voice of the Fugitive' to Actors

By Judith Egerton
jegerton@courier-journal.com

In "Voice of the Fugitive," a sharecropper's daughter who became a historian and author tells the story of a former Kentucky slave involved in the Underground Railroad.

The play, by Carridder "Rita" Jones, 73, of Glenview, Ky., is based on the autobiography of Henry Bibb and other historical documents about slavery in Kentucky. It makes its world premiere this weekend at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

"Henry and (his wife) Malinda were compelling historical figures, and their stories need to be told," said director Laura Early. "In Kentucky, we hear stories about Daniel Boone, but we don't hear enough about African Americans and others in that time period."

The one-act opens in 1843 with Bibb speaking to Detroit abolitionists about his life as a slave in Kentucky and his escape to freedom after several failed attempts.

"Voice of the Fugitive" does not shy away from the horrific elements of slavery, said Early, 44, who teaches theater at the University of Louisville and at Bellarmine University. The sensitive subject matter makes performing the play difficult for the actors, she said.

Although much of Bibb's life story is a painful reminder of the inhumanity of slavery, the play also reveals Bibb's love for his wife and child and his inspiring quest for freedom.

The actors in the 80-minute play are an accomplished trio of University of Louisville students in the theater department's master's degree program. DeAldon R. Watson plays Henry Bibb with Tiffany Gist as his wife, Malinda, and Obadiah Ewing-Roush performing three roles, including slaveholder William Gatewood.

According to the former slave's account of his life, "Narrative of the Life and Adventure of Henry Bibb, an American Slave," he was born in Shelby County, Ky., in 1815, the oldest of seven sons born to Mildred Jackson, a slave on William Gatewood's plantation. Bibb never knew his white Kentucky father, James Bibb, and was separated from his mother as a child when he was sold to another slaveholder.

Bibb's hunger for freedom was fed by the daily injustices he witnessed. He saw his siblings sold and separated. He was hired out to work, and his wages were kept by his owner. He was helpless to protect his wife, who was forced into prostitution by her owner, or his young daughter, who was brutalized by the plantation owner's wife.

After several unsuccessful attempts, Bibb escaped to the North, where he joined abolitionists. Despite repeated efforts, Bibb never found his Kentucky wife and child or secured their freedom. In 1848, he married a Cincinnati schoolteacher, and the couple settled in Canada near Detroit where they established a school and raised money to buy land for escaped slaves. In the early 1850s, Bibb started "Voice of the Fugitive," the first Canadian African-American newspaper. He died in 1854.

Reporter Judith Egerton can be reached at (502) 582-4503.

Additional Facts 'Voice of the Fugitive'

• What: Premiere of Carridder Jones' play about Kentucky slave Henry Bibb, presented by the Oldham County History Center.
• Where: Actors Theatre of Louisville, 316 W. Main St.
• When: 7:30 p.m. May 29-30; 2 p.m. May 31.
• Tickets : $8. Call (502) 584-1205.