Easter, 1906

Music by
William Averitt

Libretto By
Robert Bode

I. Ozark Pastorale

Through rough scrub and oak,
Past thimbleweed and columbine,
Across the chalky cliffs,
The buggy came.

The young couple
Rocked in easy motion
With the rhythm of horse hooves
And the gentle squeal of the buckboard bench.

Their buggy music jolned the music
Of the soft April breeze:
The trailing song of winter,
And the promise of summer to come.

II. The Attack

The actual events of that Good Friday may never be known.
20-year-old Mabel Edwards had recently moved to Springfield, hoping to find work as a hotel maid. On that Friday evening, she took a buggy ride with 22-year-old Charles Cooper, a man she had met since moving to town.
The paper the next morning reported that Charles and Mabel had been attacked by two black men wearing masks. Cooper claimed that the attackers had knocked him unconscious and robbed him, dragged Edwards to a nearby pasture, and raped her.
On Saturday morning, the police arrested two young black men, Horace Duncan and Fred Coker.
They were released after their white employer told police that they had been at work at the time of the attack.
After Duncan and Coker were released, Charles Cooper claimed that Coker had stolen his watch. Coker and Duncan were re-arrested and taken to the county jail.

III. The Attack: Reach Down, Lord

Reach down, Lord,
Reach your justice down.
When we walk in the shadow of death,
Reach your justice down.

If we stumble into the pit
And the dark is all we see.
Reach below and lift us up:
Reach your justice down.

Reach down, Lord.
Reach your justice down.
When we walk in the shadow of death,
Reach your justice down.

IV. The Gathering Mob

Now when morning was come,
all the chief priests
and the elders of the people took counsel
against Jesus to put him to death:
and they bound him and led him away,
and delivered him up to Pilate,
the governor.
A group of several hundred men and boys gathered at the jail by nightfall. Sherif Horner met them at the door and told them to go home. He threatened to fire into the crowd if they did not disperse. The mob responded with shouts and jeers and fired their guns into the air.
The mob stormed the jail with picks and sledgehammers and telephone poles. They broke through the jail door and into the cells.

V. The Hanging of Horace Duncan and Fred Coker

Duncan and Coker were bound and dragged to the foot of the Gottfried Tower in the center of the town square. Ropes were placed around their necks. One by one, they were hoisted up to the bandstand, twelve feet in the air.
Boxes and kindling were piled beneath the tower. The lifeless bodies were dowsed in coal oil, and all was lit afire.
Flames burned through the ropes and the bodies fell into the fire below. It was 11:40 in Holy Saturday night.

VI. All Ye Who Walk By

O, all ye who walk by on the road, attend and see:
If there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.

VII. The Departure

Mabel Edwards admitted that night that Horace Duncan and Fred Coker had not been the men who attacked her. She and Charles Cooper left town and were not seen again.

VIII. Run on, run on!

Run on,
Run on!
Push the horses hard.

The night is dark
And the road is rocky and steep;
Push the horses hard.

Run from yourself
And your soul's own light.
Run to your fate,
Down the dark and bitter road.

For the light you knew is dead.
The child your parents loved
And shielded from the evil dark
Is dead.

You have chosen the dark path
And the light cannot reach you.

Run on, Run on!
Push the horses hard.

IX. The Trial of Will Allen

The mob, howling "with exultant frenzy," returned to the county jail, where they found another black prisoner, still locked in his cell. The prisoner's name was Will Allen. He was accused of murdering a white man.
Will Allen was soon broken out and marched to the square. Eyewitnesses claimed that Allen was calm as he was walked through the crowd.

X. Is there any sorrow?

O, is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow?

XI. The Trial, continued

He was lifted halfway up the tower,
to the bandstand railing
directly above the smoldering
bodies of Coker and Duncan.

The firelight flickered across his face.

Now Jesus stood before the governor:
and the governor asked him, saying,
"Art thou the King of the Jews?"
And Jesus said unto him,
"Thou sayest."

A leader climbed up besides him,
held a lantern to his face,
and addressed the crowd,
“Here is Will Allen, who killed old man Roark. What will you do with him?"
"Hang him!"
Asked if he had anything to say, Allen replied,
"Bus Cain is the murderer.
I am innocent."

And when Jesus was accused
by the chief priests and elders,
he answered nothing.

“Hang him!”

Then said Pilate unto him,

"Hearest thou how many things they witness against thee?"

Asked again if he had
anything to say,
Allen repeated,

“I haven’t got
anything to say.”

And Jesus gave them no answer,
not even one word.

“He says he ain’t guilty.
What shall we do with him?”

Pilate saith unto them,

“Hang him!”

“What then shall I do unto Jesus,
who is called the Christ?”

“Let him be crucified!”

“Hang him!”

With arms stretched wide,
Will Allen jumped far out
from the bandstand.
His neck broke with a crack
that was heard out in the crowd.
His body snapped the rope
and he fell into the fire,
sending embers flying into the night air.
Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow?

XII. A Litany

There were 80 lynchings in Missouri between 1889 and 1925.

Henry Thomas
Alfred Grizzard
Benjamin Smith
John Davis
George Burke
Joseph Gebhart
Thomas Smith
Olli Truxton
Robert Hepler
Lewis Gordon
John F. Bright
David Sims
John Hughes
Redmond Burke
John Buckner
Ulysses Hayden
Joseph Johnson
George Tracy
Emmett Divens
William Henderson
James Cocking
Cecil Wayland
M. Crawford
Thomas Larkin
Jessie Winner
James Nelson
John Mitchell
Jack Coffman
Erastus Brown
Silas P. Fargo
Curtis Young
Sam Young
Henry Williams
Benjamin Jones
Unknown Black Man
Frank Embree
Thomas Hayden
Unknown White Man
William Huff
Mundee Chowagee
Henry Darley
Nelson Simpson
Arthur McNeal
John Mack
William Godbey
Peter Hampton
Louis Wright
Oliver Wright
The Corber Brothers
Abraham Witherups
Joshua Anderson
Henry Gates
Andy Clark
Thomas Gilyard
D. Malone
W. J, Mooneyhon
Robert Pettigrew
Horace Duncan
Fred Coker
Will Allen
George Johnson
Unknown Black Man
Robert Coleman
Sam Field
A.B. Richardson
Benjamin Woods
Dallas Shields
W.F. Williams
Rudd Layne
Samuel Sykes
Fayette Chandler
Unknown White Man
Roy Hammons
James T. Scott
Roosevelt Grigsby
Walter Mitchell
Unknown Black Man
Unknown Black Man

XIII. Easter, 1906

On Sunday morning, the white townspeople of Springfield came to the square, dressed in their Easter finery. They came to look for souvenirs or to stare at the puffs of smoke still coming up from the smoldering bandstand. The train station that morning was crowded with black citizens of Springfield trying to leave town, while others left by wagon or on foot.
Over 90% of the black population of Springfield left in the days following the lynchings, never to return.

XIV. The Hawk

A golden hawk
Circled twice above the ravaged square
And, with a lonely cry,
Lifted up and to the west.

High above the hills it flew,
Along the Trail of Tears,
Over the Sac River,
And the Spring and the Neosho,
Toward the open prairie
And the broad Kansas plains.

Higher it flew,
Up and up,
Beyond the reach of human cries
And the stone-hard rhythms of hate,
To the soft breathing of the azure sky
And the clean, bright music of the stars.

XV. Memorial

In the summer of 2002, a simple bronze plaque was added to an existing stone marker at the center of the Springfield town square. It reads:
"On April 14, 1906, three black men, Horace B. Duncan, Fred Coker, and Will Allen were lynched without a trial."
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning,
We will remember them.
(from "For The Fallen" by Laurence Binyon)

XVI. A Dawn of Hope

Out of the long night of despair, a soft dawn of hope.
Out of the choruses of war, a hymn of peace.
Out of the chronicles of hate, a prophesy of love.
Amen.

Finding Light

Music & Libretto by
Matthew Lyon Hazzard

Text by
Sophia Mautz
Jonathan Talberg
Emily Becker

I
Prelude

(to be read silently beforehand)

“Do not be daunted by the
enormity of the world’s grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated
to complete the work
but neither are you free
to abandon it.”

—Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro, in translation of Rabbi Tarfon, Pirkei Avot 2:11-20

II
Oregon

Jonathan Talberg & Sophia Mautz
Compiled & arranged by the composer.

The Beach strewn with sea glass,
reflecting a prism of blue and green,
purple, orange, violet brokenness, is a reminder that everything
man-made will eventually be ground into nothingness.

I want a touch that doesn’t make history.
Pleasure that doesn’t spell the end of the world.

Isn’t love a kind of action
even if powerless to stop things from happening
these footprints are happening.

III
The end of the world is a kind of weather

Sophia Mautz
Compiled & arranged by the composer.

At the top of the lighthouse,
my shoe blew off into the palm trees.

I couldn’t see where it landed among
the fronds & vines. I learned

to believe things were there even if
I couldn’t see them.

This was hard to reconcile with the sense
that things were disappearing.

Grouper, for example.
No one had eaten it in months.

We descended over the coral shelf,
bodies buoyant & gliding,

our minds atmospheres below us.
We hoped the cleaner shrimps would

mistake our thoughts for fish &
clean them.

We surveyed the dwindling life around us,
felt nothing,

crawled back onto land.
When we asked the people who had lived here a while

they just shrugged and said:
don’t worry, be happy.

The end of the world is a kind of weather.

In a foreign country, it began to snow.
The snow was black. It was the farmers burning sugarcane nearby.

They call it huasteca snow,
a kind of weather.

In certain worlds it’s like this all the time
where there’s no one left who can tell the difference

between living and dying, or
between ash and snow.

IV
This Far In

Sophia Mautz
Compiled & arranged by the composer.

while driving back from the airport

the sky was ungodly
pink & orange
emissions in the air
touched by first light

day turning everything
smoldering blue
I looked for any sign
of the human among

the power plants
& toll roads
one after the other
I caught glimpses of

christmas trees
sparkling in windows
someone calling in
on the radio

asking for help
the woman he kissed
on new years eve
hasn’t texted back

every person I see
is looking at their phone
I want to tear it all out

unpave the concrete

This far in,
are we finally numbed,
waiting out all our days,
driven to pleasure?

If there are people who want to sink an old war ship with an undetermined amount of asbestos

& the global trade of toxic substances terminates in the water
& there are waters owned by this or that country planning for future wars
& the sturgeon who outlived dinosaurs are disappearing
& ships kill over half their population while our taste for caviar grows
& Lebanon’s ancient cedars have nowhere higher up to go
& they killed a man who defended the South River forest to build a police training center—

If that, then what?

How do you keep on living?

What do you hope for?
Do you still hope?
Do you still have hope?
Is hope something you can have?
Can you have it like countries have oceans—have waters, have earth?

It’s all wrong.
The sounds in the air,
My desk which is a disfigured tree.
There is no perfection.
We are haunted.
The animals have disappeared.
What did we once have?
What did we once think life was?

If the mussels show me their way

hardening an iridescence
but no
I can’t be like them
I need a human to show me how to live
Who knows how to live?
Who knows how to live?
I am asking

This far in, Why hate this life or this world
Are we finally numbed. Why hate this life why why
Waiting out. This sunrise is beautiful
All our days. And this concrete leads us to it.

we are going
east on the turnpike
accelerating towards
a blazing sky

past factories
past smokestacks
why hate this life
or this world why

this sunrise is
beautiful &
this concrete
leads us to it

V
If The River Is Proof

Sophia Mautz
Compiled & arranged by the composer.

If the river is proof,
what is it doing to my sense of endings.

Growing up
listening to nightly reports.
The thousands of ways the world is dying.

I count the years I have left.
I count the arctic summer sea ice.
If I have children they will not see it.

Today my parents
sent me a selfie wearing masks.
They are inside their home because Oregon is burning.
The ash is coming through the chimney.

The river continues
& we believe in its continuation,
but the river’s future is the ocean.

Where do we understand what we have done?
Where do we imagine the future we want?

I am young but feel close to
death. It’s hard to
see. It’s
running
out.

The river’s ending is the ocean.

VI
Footsteps

Matthew Lyon Hazzard, Emily Becker, & Sophia Mautz
Compiled & arranged by the composer.

When I was a child,
I hid in the inky blackness of a wool blanket.
As my eyes adjusted,
I saw pinpricks of light through the threads.

Later, I saw
dark times, thoughts, futures.
I remembered the blanket and knew:
You don’t have to see the light to know it’s there.

At the mouth of the cave,
Don’t turn away.
Enter.
Step by step.

Isn’t love a kind of action?
Even if powerless to stop things from happening,
These footprints are happening.

VII
The Search for Light

Sophia Mautz & Matthew Lyon Hazzard
Compiled & arranged by the composer.

When I returned to the world of the living,
I saw people crowded in tapas bars
Leaning towards each other
Their cheekbones bathed in soft red light.

Suddenly here.
Why do I need the world to survive?
Every poem, a monument of hope?
Every song I’ve sung, spent second guessing?
What is it that can loosen the mind yoked to the boulder of conclusion?

We make a small fire in our effort to stay afloat.

I never understood why poems about war
ended by praising the blackberry,
always returning to beauty
as if these pathetic little grams could outweigh our history.

Here.
Between Roman columns that stood through history, art movements, wars, empires, looting, conquering, inventions, progress—
people kiss in the sunlight.

We make a small fire in our glistening effort to stay afloat.

VIII
The Light in You

Matthew Lyon Hazzard

We are strangers               walking the same path
We stand divided               with the same flesh
We’ve forgotten                 in our walled-off lives
that we are children          in the eyes of time.

I recognize the light that shines in you.

If you fear me                       or hate the ground I stand
this path we travel               will one day end
before the stars above        ever see our light
we’ll wink and flicker           in their distant sight.

I recognize the light that shines in you.

We are strangers               walking the same path
We stand divided               with the same flesh
We are different sides        of the same mind:
A soul's expression            of humankind.

“Flower Into Kindness”
from
Into The Light

Music
Jake Runestad

Text by
Rabindranath Tagore, adapted by Runestad

The soul is made of love and must ever return to love.
There is nothing so wise,
nor so beautiful,
nor so strong as love.
(Mechthild von Magdeburg)
Above all, love.
(Peter the Apostle)
I shed my words on the earth
as the tree sheds its leaves.
Let my thoughts unspoken
flower into kindness.