Events Calendar

Reconciling the Past: Truth and Theatrical Storytelling into a new Future
Sunday, February 28 at 4:00 p.m.

A playwright, an original Freedom Rider, and members of the Iowa Freedom Riders. A conversation about truth and reconciliation and memory on civic and artistic stages.

Moderated by Micah Ariel James.

Photo: Miss Betty Daniels Rosemond, an original Freedom Rider. Photo courtesy of Isaiah Reaves.

Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice
This event is part of the series Art and the Pursuit of Justice. Click here for a complete listing of other events in the series.

Tickets
This event is free and will be presented on Zoom. Please join us on the day of the event using the following link: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/98430739413.

About the Panelists

Betty Daniels Rosemond is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana. She is a current resident of College Hill and has lived in Cincinnati for the last 57 years.
Betty attended LSU and left the University to become a member of The Congress Of Racial Equality or C.O.R.E. as a Freedom Rider under the leadership of Dr. James  Farmer.
Mrs. Rosemond was among those who picketed Woolworth's in New Orleans. She went in one day and sat down at the lunch counter that was for whites only because she wanted her mother to be able to one day sit at any lunch counter that she wanted.
As a Freedom Rider, she rode across the country with other young people from many different backgrounds, testing bus stations and facilities to see if they were complying with the ICC's ruling that banned discrimination on Intrastate travel. The Freedom Riders were faced with violence of epic proportions and even death. They faced much opposition and hostility but they accomplished their mission.
In 1961, she nearly lost her life during a Freedom Ride in Poplarville, Mississippi.
She was arrested in Alexandria Virginia during a sit-in at a downtown restaurant that served whites only.
On May 4th 2011, she appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show with 189 surviving Freedom Riders, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the first Freedom ride. Said Winfrey, "As an African American woman born in Mississippi in the South, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Freedom Riders, as do we all. I know my life would be different were it not for them."
On November 9th 2011, The National Women's Law Center honored Mrs. Rosemond  along with 14 other women Freedom Riders at their Annual Dinner in Washington, D.C. They met privately with President Barack Obama and he gave them all a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The President noted the Freedom Riders helped him make it to the White House in their efforts to advance equality in America a half-century ago.
In October 2014 , she was inducted into the Ohio Civil Rights Hall Of Fame.
Today, Betty Daniels Rosemond is a Poet and an Inspirational Speaker who loves the Lord and credits his grace and mercy for her being here today!
When asked if she would get on the bus today, her response was, "Absolutely. Any cause worth living for is a cause worth dying for."

Isaiah Reaves is an emerging young playwright whose work explores a spectrum of Black and Queer experiences. A native of Cincinnati, he graduated cum laude from Northern Kentucky University in 2020. Reaves’ plays have been staged and read by The Classical Theatre of Harlem at Lincoln Center, Vintage Soul Productions of Connecticut, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, and many others. He is a Jackie Demaline Award finalist, an Iowa Arts Fellow, and a Cincinnati CityBeat Critics Pick recipient. He is currently in pursuit of an MFA at the historic University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop.

Raneem Hamad is Sudanese American and a senior at Columbia University studying Human Rights and Public Health. Post-graduation she hopes to pursue law school, and a career in advocacy, and international human rights. Her journey within activism started in 2017 as a senior in high school, where she founded and co-led a youth organizing group named Student Against Hate and Discrimination, advocating for changes that better support Black students in the Iowa City school district. This past summer, Raneem founded the Iowa Freedom Riders (IFR), a youth-led activist group advocating for justice for Iowa City's BIPOC community through abolition. She also serves as a Commissioner for Iowa City's Truth & Reconciliation Commission, birthed from the tireless work of IFR's Black women organizers. Her pronouns are she/her/hers. 

Ala Mohamed was born in Sudan, but grew-up in the United States. She is a double major in enterprise leadership and Chinese at the University of Iowa. Ala helped find the Iowa Freedom Riders (IRF) last summer. Since then, she has been an IFR representative, protest coordinator, and part of the housing committee. She plans to help IFR take off before heading to law school.

Micah Ariel James is a playwright, producer, and dramaturg based in Iowa City, IA. She is also the Associate Director of Education and Community Engagement at Hancher Auditorium, where she develops and facilitates arts programming with an eye toward helping artists discover new approaches to creating meaningful engagement with campus and community partners, and to making the arts more accessible to all audiences. Micah received an MFA in Theatre Arts (Playwriting) from the University of Iowa and a BA in Playwriting from Columbia College Chicago.