BLACK HISTORY LIVE - Colorado Humanities

2025 Black History Live

Now in its 16th year, Colorado Humanities’ Black History Live tour is an annual recognition each February of the significant contributions African Americans have made and continue to make to art, culture, economic development, education, human rights, medicine, public services, politics, and sports. This year’s statewide tour will feature the living-history portrayals of Harriet Tubman by nationally acclaimed scholar/actor Becky Stone, and Louis Armstrong by scholar/actor Marvin Jefferson.

The portrayals will be performed in a Chautauqua format, which is a first-person dramatization of a historical figure. The speaker’s monologue typically lasts 40 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of Q&A, first in character and then out of character as the scholar/performer.

Click below to learn more about the historical figure and actor/scholar.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman (1822-1913)

Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland and named Araminta Ross. Maryland did not have the huge plantations we associate with American chattel slavery. “Minty” was rented to many masters to do a variety of work from the age of five until she escaped to freedom. When she ran away from Maryland it took her faith, intelligence, cunning, love of family, and determination to bring her family through. By that time she had married freedman John Tubman and had changed her name to Harriet. She returned to Dorchester County time and time again to take approximately 70 slaves on the journey to freedom. Harriet had faith in the American dream and acted out of the conservative values of the time – temperance, Christian service, and love of country. Those values gave her a strong sense of right and wrong. Slavery was wrong. Denying women the right to vote was wrong. Drunken behavior was wrong. She had the responsibility to fight for what she knew to be right.

By 1859, Tubman had brought her aged parents through to Canada. She owned a home in Auburn, New York, where she sheltered and taught fugitives how to live as free people. She had quit the Underground Railroad, but that did not stop her from forcibly rescuing a fugitive slave from a courtroom in Troy, New York in 1860 as she was passing through town.

She was angry with Mr. Lincoln for not doing what he knew was right. Eager to take action toward freeing her people, she went to the Department of the South during the Civil War to serve as a Union nurse and spy. Tubman was able to plan and lead an armed raid that destroyed rebel storehouses, rice plantations, and freed over 750 slaves.

While she lived in the North, Tubman raised money for the abolitionist and the suffrage movements by speaking at conventions and gatherings. The life of white women in the United States was different from hers, but she recognized that all women deserve the right to vote, saying, “I have worked hard enough to believe it.” Women had done more than enough for this country to enjoy that right.

Tubman had a clear vision of what was going on in her country and had the courage to take action. She was compassionate to all and obedient to God, giving Him all credit and glory. But she called a snake a snake (a copperhead was a Northerner with Southern racist attitudes), encouraged people to action (she would have been with John Brown if she could have), and took action herself when needed. We remember and honor Harriet Tubman as a champion of civil rights, a feminist, and a patriot.

Becky Stone

About Becky Stone

Becky Stone was born and raised in Philadelphia. She earned her undergraduate degree at Vassar College in Drama with a minor in French. Her M.A. is in Elementary Educational Counseling from Villanova University. Becky worked seven years for the Philadelphia School System and taught theater 10 years at a classical Christian school in NC. Becky has been a Chautauqua scholar since 2003 when she first presented Pauli Murray. Her other characters are Rosa Parks, and Maya Angelou. All were premiered at the Greenville, South Carolina Chautauqua Festival. Becky also performs as a storyteller at festivals, libraries, and schools.

Favorite Quotes from Harriet Tubman:

“I was a conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

“…the white people had got the Negroes here to do their drudgery and now they were trying to root them out and ship them to Africa, but they can’t do it. We’re rooted here and they can’t pull us up.”

“Slavery is the next thing to hell.“

“I can’t die but once.”

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971)

In the annals of 20th-century American music, there is Before Louis Armstrong and After Louis Armstrong…literally. Louis Armstrong was a “game changer” of the highest order. He transformed American music through his trumpet playing and his singing and is arguably the most influential musical artist of the 20th century.

He was born on August 4, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana in abject poverty (although he would claim until the day he died that he was born on July 4, 1900). His father was a factory worker with whom he had very little good to say, and his mother (affectionately called “Mayann”) was a part-time prostitute, sadly, to bring in much-needed money for her family. He grew up in an area of New Orleans known as “The Battlefield,” yet he appreciated what he learned and never looked down on his mother who he knew did the best she could for him and his sister. “I had to work and help Mayann put bread on the table since it was just the three of us living in this one big room, which was all we could afford. But we were happy. My mother had one thing that no matter how much schooling anyone has, and that was Good Common Sense (and respect for human beings). Yea. That’s my diploma. All through my life, I remembered it.” It was this foundation that ultimately led him to become a self-made man and one who was beloved all over the world.

His love extended beyond his own family to the Karnofskys, a Jewish family he worked for when he was young. They treated him like a family member, giving him food and shelter when needed, and he was able to borrow money from them as well. The Karnofskys lent him the money to buy his first cornet. He was able to see not just racism against African Americans, but bigotry against Jewish Americans as well. All of these experiences, as well as being in a city where different cultures were constantly revealing themselves to him, helped to create an artistic giant no one saw coming. However, these experiences did not stop him from getting into trouble, and when he fired blanks from a gun to celebrate New Years Eve, he was sent to stay in the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, and it was here where he learned the discipline that was lacking from his life. He also learned how to play the horn while there and the rest, as they say, is history.

Marvin Jefferson

About Marvin Jefferson

Marvin Jefferson has an extensive background as an educator, professional actor/director, and living history scholar. He has devoted many years to studying the lives of Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King, Jr. Since 1997, he has engaged audiences across the country with his popular Chautauqua performances of these two important historical figures. In 2012, he was commissioned to portray York for Ohio Chautauqua. Most recently, Jefferson toured Colorado as Martin Luther King, Jr. in February 2024 as part of Black History Live sponsored by Colorado Humanities.

From 1995 to 2018, he taught acting at Bloomfield College, a private liberal arts college in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and he attended and studied acting at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Jefferson began his training as a Chautauqua scholar with the help and guidance of two nationally renowned scholars, the late Giles R. Wright and Dr. Clement A. Price.

Favorite Quotes from Louis Armstrong:

“Musicians don’t retire; They stop when there’s no more music in them.”

“I never want to be anything more than I am; what I don’t have, I don’t need.”

“There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.”

“What we play is Life.”

Our Calendar

Black History in Action

For our 2017 Black History Live tour, Becky Stone portrayed Harriet Tubman, showing audiences how one woman became an abolitionist who led hundreds of slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad, a Union spy during the American Civil War, and one of America’s most beloved humanitarians.

2024 Black History Live Partners

Special thanks to our sponsors

Upcoming Events

Join Colorado Humanities in our upcoming events

Unveiling New National History Day Curricula

December 6 @ 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Meet Elsa Wolff’s Annie Oakley – Littleton

December 19 @ 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm

2025 Colorado Book Award Submissions Close

January 3, 2025

Museum on Main Street in Gunnison

January 8, 2025 - February 18, 2025

GET INVOLVED TODAY

Colorado Humanities forges program partnerships statewide to improve education, strengthen cultural institutions and enrich community life. Your contribution makes you an important part of it.

VOLUNTEER

DONATE NOW