Read John Monaghan’s review of “Alabama Story” for FREEP
“Alabama Story” is the real life story of Emily Wheelock Reed, the librarian who defended a book that caused a minor uproar in 1959 Alabama.
The offending text, “The Rabbits’ Wedding,” is a picture book for children (it’s still in print) about the forest nuptials of two bunnies in the company of other woodland animals. One bunny is black, the other, white. In the segregationist Deep South of half a century ago, that was a problem.
The new play by Kenneth Jones, produced by the Theatre Company of the University Detroit Mercy, chronicles the fight between Reed (Melissa Beckwith) and E.W. Higgins (Daniel Jaroslaw), a state senator, over a book he considered dangerous. Reed refused to remove “The Rabbits’ Wedding” — and other books on a list produced by the senator — from her library shelves.