Mr. Gantt Modified Brings Truth Home to Liberty by Catherine Raine with Shelton Ponder (2024)
I am a White woman who grew up in a border state in the last quarter of the last century, but I did not learn my hometown’s complete history until I watched a play called Mr. Gantt Modified in 2022. Written and performed by African American historian and poet Shelton Ponder, the play uncovers layers of White-stifled truths that I should have known. White silence about segregation enabled my ignorance when I was in school, but responsibility for removing it lies on my adult shoulders. Learning from Mr. Gantt Modified has hastened a personal journey from the hometown I thought I knew to the one where “Colored Men” and “White Men” signs once loomed over bathrooms in the courthouse. The town where Frank Hughes Memorial Library refused service to African Americans. And the town where Garrison School pupils were given old textbooks with missing pages from the White schools.