Wharton Center's Pasant Theatre will be hosting two free jazz performances this Sunday to pay tribute to the life of Rosa Parks and commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.
Tickets are free for both the 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. performances, entitled "Jazz: Spirituals, Prayer and Protest." First-come, first-serve tickets can be picked up at the Wharton Center Box Office and are required for admittance.
"Past programs have featured gospel and jazz music, along with dialogue on lyric interpretation and the history of jazz, especially as it has related to the civil rights movement," said Paulette Gransberry-Russell, director at the Office of Affirmative Action, Compliance and Monitoring, or AACM, via e-mail.
This year the MSU Jazz Band will be performing, and the theme is "40 Years After the 1965 Voting Rights Act."
"With the death of Mrs. Rosa Parks in October 2005, Prof. Whitaker decided to include in this year's program a tribute to Mrs. Parks," said Granberry-Russell.
Parks died Oct. 24, 2005 at the age of 92. This is the first year the event will be honoring Parks alongside King.
Like King, Parks used nonviolence and civil disobedience as a way to challenge racial problems in the U.S. She played a pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which officially started on Dec. 1, 1955, by refusing to give up her seat to a white man.
Music therapy freshman Stefanee Morrison will be singing at both of the performances. Morrison, who sang at Parks' funeral last November, was a family friend of "the mother of the modern-day civil rights movement."
Besides being entertained by one of the most well-recognized jazz studies programs in the country, audience members will have the opportunity to gain a stronger grasp of the civil rights movement in the U.S.
"My own experience has been that the audience will walk away from the evening with a clearer understanding of the connection between the movement and the music," said Gransberry-Russell.
"Music sustained those who were engaged in the nonviolent struggle to bring justice to those historically denied justice in this country."
