Sixty years ago this weekend, young activists marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, demanding their right to vote and changing history in the process. Today, another group of young people is using art to make their voices heard.

A Boston-based arts group, beheard.world, has teamed up with Selma-area teens for "Selma Again," a production that blends dance, spoken word and music to shed light on the struggles the city still faces today.

Director and choreographer Anna Myer said the performance is about pushing forward, as well as looking back.

"The piece talks about real things that are happening and things that go to the heart," she said, "and it also talks about love and the only way forward is love and the only way to keep moving forward is if we do this together."

Myer said she first visited Selma years ago and was struck by how poverty and crime persist despite its historic significance. She and her husband, filmmaker Jay Paris, along with Selma natives, helped create a nonprofit initiative to blend nonviolence education, performing arts and storytelling for local youth. It's part of the Selma Cross-Cultural Nonviolence and Performing Arts Academy.

The academy was co-founded by Dallas County natives and civil rights veterans Charles Bonner and Viola Douglas, along with the Rev. Gary Crum of Elwood Christian Church. Through poetry and dance, teens confront modern challenges and honor past civil rights leaders.

Myer said this year's production highlights how today's youth can step into the legacy of activism left by the "foot soldiers" of the 1960s.

"For the kids, it's a big deal, because having a voice and speaking to an auditorium of people, it charges them up and really gives them an understanding that if they can speak and they have a voice, that people will listen - and that they should use their voice," she said. "And I think that's key."

"Selma Again" will be performed today (Fri., March 7) at the Morehouse College Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, and Saturday, March 8, at Ellwood Christian Academy in Selma, as part of the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

Myer emphasized that the show's ultimate goal is to spark meaningful conversations, promote understanding and inspire action for lasting change.


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The Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston is one of many historic and cultural institutions across the nation to lose access to federal funding.

The Trump administration put the staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the agency that provides funding to libraries and museums, on leave. The museum had submitted a grant proposal for $500,000 for the institute's African American History and Culture program.

Desmond Bertrand-Pitts, CEO of the museum, said although the funds are not available, they will still be there to serve the community.

"Organizations like ours have to work harder to prove our value and our worth but we have good partners like the Kinder Foundation to keep us going," Bertrand-Pitts explained. "They're in support of a Juneteenth Initiative that we have coming up. The federal funding announcement can affect programming, but the museum is still going to live on."

He added federal funding is not used for day-to-day operations but cuts could affect some of its outreach programming with kids and veterans.

In 2023, the museum added more than $2.5 million to the Houston economy. Bertrand-Pitts pointed out although the museum highlights the stories of African Americans in the military, everyone can learn from the exhibits. He argued recent Trump administration attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion make their work even more important.

"We are American history," Bertrand-Pitts asserted. "There are so many freedoms that we now enjoy that would have not been possible had it not been for the United States Colored Troops, and for the Buffalo Soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen, all of the men and women that came after."

The museum has raised $10 million as part of a $13 million capital campaign for its "Ready and Forward" program. Funds will be used to repair and renovate the facility and expand exhibits and programs.


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By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Mighty sword and not-so-mighty rubber chicken in tow, Jenny Graham prepares for her upcoming show: The Three Musketeers & The Very Pretty Diamonds. 

She’s playing a servant to the queen herself—full of eye rolls and comical disgruntlement, not unlike her real-life persona. 

“I’m a sassafras,” the actress says playfully. 

Graham is part of Expanding Stage. It’s a partnership between theatre company Black Hills Playhouse and a program for people with disabilities, DakotAbilities. It all started in 2013 as a residency program trial. It stuck, and it’s now one of just a couple companies in the state with similar offerings.

“I love doing [theatre]. I’ve been doing it for the last eight years, and I wouldn’t change it for anything,” Graham says.

Magical and Adaptable 

Debra Kern Workman is the education artistic director at Black Hills Playhouse (which is home to a range of objectively outstanding programs) in South Dakota. She coordinates with teaching artists to educate actors in theatre concepts, who put on shows several times a year across the state. 

“What does it look like to support professional artists for who they are?” Kern Workman asks. “It is magical.” 

DakotAbilities actors—typically a dozen or so per show—rehearse twice a week. The stage is entirely adaptable: Need help holding something? Let’s tie it to your wheelchair.

Want to communicate in other ways? Insert picture boards or voice actors to help you shine. Maybe a costume’s fabric texture isn’t it (who wants scratchy, irritating zippers anyway?) so actors can modify those choices. 

“What’s really cool is the fact that the Black Hills Playhouse is able to adapt to the people that we serve,” says Kelly Breen, a direct support professional at DakotAbilities.

“We have a lot of individuals with a lot of different needs … body movements, body types, and we’re just able to make it happen,” she says. 

Graham, who admits she sometimes gets nervous on stage or forgets her lines, says having a stage partner helps her do what she does best: Perform. 

An Open Stage 

“I think the most cool thing is when we perform … and the audience seeing us perform,” she says.

Graham will direct her electric wheelchair across the stage, lyrically driving it during sword fights or other scenes. She hopes people will leave her shows with more compassion. 

“I wish that people would understand the disabilities of different people more, that it’s not scary,” Graham says. 

And after eight years of Expanding Stage and dozens of performances, that’s happening. 

“When people work with us on these shows, I’m like, you will never see theater in the same way,” Kern Workman says. “[This] program has informed us on what it means to be inclusive, and what it means to support people no matter what theatre you’re doing.”

DakotAbilities has doubled performances due to popularity; folks will fly in from across the country to catch a show. 

Kern Workman recalls a mother seeing her son, who uses a wheelchair, dance for the first time during a performance. She was in awe. 

“Yes, he can dance,” Kern Workman says. 

“And it was beautiful.”


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.

By Alana Horton for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

When’s the last time you wrote a love letter—and then read it out loud to a room full of your neighbors?

That’s what happened in Granite Falls, Minnesota (population 2,600), during a recent artist residency featuring JJ Kapur, a theater performer turned psychology PhD student.

Over the course of a week, Kapur’s workshop, Letters of Love, invited participants to explore vulnerability through letter-writing and oral storytelling. Attendees spent two evenings writing heartfelt letters while sharing home-cooked Singaporean meals prepared by the artist’s father. The final night culminated in a public reading.

The love letters took many forms, including messages to partners, departed family members, and even the town itself.

“I did not expect people to open up the way that they did,” Kapur said. “There were folks who came up to me who literally didn’t know things about the people they’ve lived with in this community for years.”

A Space for Exchange

Based in Des Moines, Iowa, Kapur was invited to rural Granite Falls by Department of Public Transformation, a nonprofit arts organization that runs a unique space called The YES! House.

The YES! House is a creative, multi-use community gathering space on Main Street. Upstairs, two apartments host visiting artists. Downstairs, community members can attend events, hold meetings, cowork, or simply hang out. Each year, the space hosts up to 20 artists-in-residence—a number that continues to grow.

Kapur said that staying at The YES! House during his residency was essential to Letters of Love, allowing him and his father to connect with community members and share stories and food beyond workshop sessions.

“We made The YES! House our home. In our Indian culture, when people come to your house, you take off your shoes, you’re offered tea, and the first thing someone asks is: ‘Have you eaten?’ Not ‘How are you?’” he said. “We wanted people to feel they could write from that place—like they were sitting in their living room.”

The ability to offer that kind of care is what makes The YES! House special, says coordinator Luwaina Al-Otaibi.

“Deep work takes more than a one-off event,” she said. “It’s about the connection between artists and the community—and how we can facilitate that.”

Healing and Performance

Kapur, who is studying to become a counseling psychologist, is drawn to the intersection of therapy and theater.

“I’m interested in how groups can heal together,” he said. “How is the theater therapeutic and how is therapy kind of a form of theater?”

That resonance was felt by participants, including Al-Otaibi, who read a love letter to her cat of 23 years who was nearing the end of his life.

“I would never just have had that outlet,” she said. “There’s something healing about getting up and reading something like that in front of people.”

In a world that often asks us to guard our hearts, Letters of Love made space for Granite Falls residents to speak theirs out loud—and be heard.


Alana Horton wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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