Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 235

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(ENTERTAINMENT--THEATER.) Program for a Boston performance of Louis Farrakhan's Orgena. 4 pages, 9 x 6 inches, on one folding sheet with cover illustration; folds, tack holds, minor soiling. Boston, 19 May 1961
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Additional Details

Orgena ("A Negro" spelled backwards) was a musical written and performed by Nation of Islam member Louis X, formerly known as Gene Walcott and soon to become better known as Louis Farrakhan. This lot contains a program for Orgena's return Boston performance at the Donnelly Memorial Theatre produced by Louis X's mosque. It is headed "The Muslims of Muhammad's Mosque No. 11 present Orgena Starring Louis X (Gene Walcott)." It includes a full page of background on Orgena, and a full page of biography on Louis X. It explains that "When Louis X accepted the religion of Islam, he made a vow that he would never appear on the stage again unless it would be beneficial to his downtrodden people." Orgena had debuted in Boston in January 1960, was later performed in New York's Carnegie Hall and elsewhere, and here returns to Boston.

"The first segment of 'Orgena' depicts the ancestral background of the (so-called) Negro, his fall into slavery and the social degeneration which followed and finally his desire to discover the roots of his beginning. The second segment features 'The Trial,' which depicts the day of reckoning for those who have enslaved and tortured the peoples of earth." An adaptation of a speech from "The Trial" portion of Orgena opens Spike Lee's biopic "Malcolm X": "I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth. . . "

This program is inscribed with four words reflecting the theme of the play: "405 years"; "greedy"; and "1555," reflecting the year of the first enslaved people brought from Africa to England.

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