Tallahassee Symphony to Premiere Joel Thompson Work About 1950s Civil Rights Bus Boycott

The Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra has commissioned a new work, “based on ‘The Pain and the Promise,’ a book written by Tallahassee’s Glenda Alice Rabby, in which … facts about the 1956-57 Tallahassee Bus Boycott have been transformed into music and elevated into a soaring piece of art,” writes Marina Brown in Wednesday’s (3/22) Tallahassee Democrat. “The TSO’s newly commissioned symphonic/choral work, ‘Walk In Dignity’ by Joel Thompson, will premiere March 25 and 26 … at … Florida State University and … at Florida A&M University … the audience will be asked to join in a ‘Civil Rights Sing-Along.’… The TSO and the Concert Choir of FAMU will bring to life the events of those fateful months in the mid-1950s when two young women, and later many others, were arrested for declining to ‘go to the back of the bus.’… Tallahassee’s civil rights movement would coalesce to form a citywide bus boycott that eventually resulted in the desegregation of the city’s public transportation … ‘Joel Thompson’s “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” had been wonderfully received when it was first performed here in 2019,’ [Tallahassee Symphony CEO Amanda] Stringer said…. ‘This story of the Tallahassee Bus Boycott … took place right here with our own local heroes.’ ”