Then, in early 2022, came “Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till,” an immersive stage adaptation of the 1955 trial transcript featuring the white Mississippi men found not guilty of murdering Black Chicago teen Emmett Till. Mills and Round served as co-creators, co-producers and writers of that project as well. By the fall of the same year, Round performed in Congo Square Theatre’s “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” a 90-minute series of vignettes focusing on healing from the injustice of racialized violence. As an actor, Round used his experiences of growing up in North Lawndale. This month, Round centered his neighborhood again in his latest work, his first solo play titled “Lawndale King.” It’s a work that focuses on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s local 1966 stand against inequitable housing, education and employment. On Jan. 19, the Chicago History Museum hosted a staged reading of the play.
“I had this story on my heart since college,” Round said. Violence and the effects of systemic racism pushed him out of Chicago, he said, but seeing his neighborhood in the pages of a book about King in North Lawndale while in Ohio made him pause.
“When I saw that, I was angry and excited at the same time, because I’ve learned about Christopher Columbus, all these other people, but I never learned about Martin Luther King living in my neighborhood,” he said. “Fast forward after ‘Trial in the Delta’ and understanding that was the launch of the civil rights movement, it felt right to do ‘Lawndale King’ because it’s another hidden story.”
Round’s telling of the historical visit is chronological, from the day that King moves into the apartment in disrepair, the struggles with getting the movement across to different ages, and the Chicago political machine. But instead of painting King as iconic, Round gives the audience details that show he was human. Yes, he played pool. Yes, he smoked. Yes, he liked to drink Bristol Cream Sherry, but as Round says, “He wasn’t perfect, and that makes his work that much more extraordinary. He’s human, just like you and I, and that’s what the civil rights movement was about — it was filled with regular people with extraordinary talents that came together for the betterment of a people.”
The creative license added to this project on the first significant Freedom Movement in the North was solely used to add context to the actions surrounding King’s eight-month stay in the third-floor apartment at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. The figures that worked with and against King are featured, including Charles Swibel, former chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority; Andrew Young, an activist and politician; Fred Douglas “Bobby” Gore a one-time leader of the Vice Lords street gang turned activist and community organizer; former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley; Rev. James Bevel; Coretta Scott King and Al Raby, the person who brought King to Chicago.
Raby’s daughter Kathy and granddaughter Katanya were in attendance at the recent reading in the Chicago History Museum.
“It was wonderful to see Al because he’s not celebrated in the way that he should be,” Katanya said. She offered one suggestion for the Raby character — showing her granddad’s propensity for walking into someone’s home and grabbing a beer from a person’s fridge before a meeting. Round said he was looking forward to adding the tidbit to the play going forward.
Round spent three years researching the city and King’s moves therein at the time, including the Chicago City Council’s ”Silent Six,” the bloc of Black aldermen who could be counted on to vote with Daley regardless of the issue. He pored over the transcript of the summit meeting between Daley and King and gathered testimonies from elder North Lawndale residents.
Round is focusing on getting funds to produce a full production of the play. Filmmaker Pemon Rami heard King speak in the city as a teen. He signed up to direct the work because it’s a story “we need to hear.”
“When you understand the power that Daley had in the city and what King was able to accomplish, it’s amazing,” Rami said.
“I was talking to a young man running for office, and he says Malcolm was fighting for our humanity and he was killed. King, who was nonviolent, was killed. Fred Hampton was trying to feed people and set up medical centers. Was the whole process a failure?” Rami said. “I would say, no. The failure comes in our inability to tell the stories about ourselves and our greatness. It’s about telling the positive things that are being done. Unless we do that, we’re inundated with negative stuff. We have people who came together and said, ‘In spite of the things that have happened, we have to push on. We have to make the world the kind of place that we want it to be.’ What else can we do other than that?”
