Co-Founder

My name is Angie Bolton. I am 71 years old and was born and raised in the segregated south.

Athens, Georgia to be specific.

I remember riding the back of the bus and signs saying white only or colored only. As a little girl, I once asked my mom what color the color in the colored water fountain was.

I was told to always strive to be the best, (I had to be better than whites to be taken seriously), to wear clean clothes, not to be too loud, to be on time and to avoid eating on the street. I grew up knowing that the police were not there to protect and serve me, but to keep whites safe from me.

What is a good change?

The fact that segregation is not legal anymore. A person of a different cultural, ethnic, religious, or sexual orientation is not inferior to any other human being. I did not use the word race because race is a social construct to divide people. It is not a scientific or biological fact.

Even though there is still discrimination and bias in society, it is not legal.

My husband is Caucasian. There are no longer miscegenation laws on the books making it illegal for us to be married. Another good thing.

When I grew up in Athens the law said that schools were “separate but equal”. That phrase was an excuse to justify the dual school system. I attended segregated schools until junior high.

In my schools, we had hand me down textbooks sometimes missing pages. Our school buildings were not maintained as well by the school system. Teachers had to augment our education with books purchased by themselves or the PTA.

The elementary school I attended was across the street from a poultry processing business and down the street from a pulp wood factory. As you can imagine, the odor was not pleasant especially in the spring/summer months when the windows were open.

By 1967, Athens had what was called Freedom of Choice. That meant that parents could choose to send children to any school in their district. No white parent would choose to send their child to one of the black schools because they knew full well that the schools were not equal. At that time, there was still a dual system. My parents and some other black parents chose to enroll children in the white junior high.

When the Clarke County school system was consolidated in 1970, my former elementary school was turned into the school bus parking facility. No white parent would want their children to attend a school in a smelly location.

In 1970 I was entering 10th grade.

I am an only child. My mother is an only child. My father’s two sisters did not marry or have children. These facts mean that family celebrations consisted of me and adults. I was a nerdy child. I was bullied by other children. While in segregated schools, I was called teacher’s pet. Once the schools were desegregated, the bullying from other African American children took on the component of internalized racism. I was called Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom and you think you are white. A bad thing.

Due to the unpleasant atmosphere at school, I decided to skip myself ahead a year. The summer after 10 th grade, I enrolled in summer school and completed my junior year credits in the summer. So, when school resumed in the fall, I entered as a senior.

I applied to Smith, Wellesley and Yale. I was accepted to all three. I wanted to go to Smith as I had spoken with Smith representatives about the drama program but one of the bankers at the bank my parents used had gone to Yale and pushed me in that direction.

Yale was a culture shock. I did not go to a prep school. I had only been north once, at seven to visit cousins.

How did I become an artist?

I was always in choir in junior high and high school. I went to all state choir. I was in theater club in high school.

In college, I majored in drama but I was introduced to modern dance. Three of the summers when I was at Yale, I attended Harvard Summer Dance Institute to study dance.

After living in Massachusetts and Michigan post college, I moved to Seattle to study dance at the summer dance classes offered by the Bill Evans Dance Company In 1978 and 1979. I had taken dance classes from Bill Evans at one of the Harvard Summer Dance Institutes.

I decided to move to Seattle after the 1979 Bill Evans Dance Workshop.

Since moving to Seattle, I have been a member of a music/performance group called Tickle Tune Typhoon an award winning children’s band, have performed in plays, managed a theater group whose work was focused on social justice issues, taught dance and drama to children from toddlers to high school and currently instruct dance in a program for people with Parkinson’s disease. I was on the board of Mirror Stage theater company for ten years.

Sometimes I feel that being an artist at this frightening time in history is not important. Then I think back on conversations I have had with audience members who have seen performances that focus on racism, classism, bigotry, and prejudice.

Dramatized situations on these topics can have a deeper impact on human emotions than a lecture.

An example: I acted and managed Growth and Prevention Theatre for a few years. The work of the company was about race, gender, class and discrimination of all kinds. The plays depicted scenes of discrimination in schools, workplaces and families. After the performances, there was a moderated discussion of the issues with the cast and audience. Audience members often admitted that seeing and feeling an incidence of bigotry and prejudice did more to open their minds to a different point of view than reading about it or hearing a lecture.

My life experiences directly influence my choices. I want to perform works of music, drama and dance that show the full experience of all people not just the stories of the victors. The stories of the colonized are integral to the full understanding of the human experience. I view the world through the lens of female, African American, and southern survivor of Jim Crow laws.

All my life gives me ammunition for the fight to push back against the “alternative facts” taking over the United States today. It is important to remember what has happened in the past.

Some of the prejudiced and bigoted norms of the past are currently being put forth as the way to “make America great again”. As a female person of color, I hear coded language for “make America white and male dominated again”. I hear “get back in the kitchen.” I hear “stay home and have children.” I hear “go back to where you came from.” I hear that I don’t matter. I hear white lives matter but everyone else is expendable.