Online Archives

BY LINDA WORTHINGTON
UMCONNECTION STAFF

The presence of Josiah Henson, the main character in Harriet Beecher Stowe?s best-selling 'Uncle Tom?s Cabin,' is alive and well in the Baltimore-Washington Conference.

A house, where Henson lived for a while as a slave and Methodist preacher, is in Bethesda, and recently he has come to life through a new, original play 'The Honorable Josiah Henson,' written by Dottye Williams, of Asbury UMC in Washington, D.C.

Henson?s 're-birth' started when retired Bishop Forrest Stith and the former Washington Conference Reunion committee asked the Asbury Actors for Christ (AAFC) to prepare a play about Henson for last September?s reunion.

Williams, the AAFC director, responded 'Who?'

It took a 68-page autobiography and a 30-minute video to get the answer. Then Williams sat down at her laptop and 'let God begin the writing,' she said.

Henson was born into slavery near Port Tobacco in Charles County in 1789. He lived almost a century, dying in 1883 near Dresden, Ontario, where he had fled with his family some time around 1830. The dwelling he lived in is now a historic site and has been restored to the 1850 period. The Henson family cemetery is next door.

Williams, whose daytime job is as a physical therapist, was first a professional actor. She also worked with a church drama group until two years ago, when her father urged her to return to the church of her childhood, Asbury UMC.

There she was asked to head up a drama group, and was soon writing and producing five-minute sketches. That?s all she had written when she was asked to write the play about Henson.

'The Lord spoke to me and said ?you can do this,?' she said. She wrote the 40-minute play in two-and-a-half weeks.

The characters are based on the real life stories she found in her research and some imagination. She created the Rev. Robert Motery character by compiling together several real pastors and then named him after an ancestor.

Williams knew Eric Johnson should play the lead character of Josiah Henson, and 'God pointed the way' for the rest of the cast, except for a vacancy for someone to play a slave and master. She rewrote that role to be a woman and then played the part herself. She was the only one of the 11 actors who had experience in acting beyond brief skits.

It was as she was looking for an appropriate costume for herself that she hit on the idea to produce the play 'all in black and white, like an old-time movie,' she said. 'Black and white works beautifully.'

The play starts with Josiah Henson as a little boy, born into slavery. He sees the severe beating of his father for defending his wife against the slave master, the story told in Henson?s autobiography. It continues when Henson is about 18-years-old, already sold as a slave three times, and covers his life until his 70s.

During the premiere production of 'The Honorable Josiah Henson' at the reunion of the former Washington Conference, the cast entered from the back, the slaves chained together walking down the aisle with the slave mistress in the lead, a slave holding an umbrella over her head. 'From that moment, the audience was hooked,' Williams said.

Requests for the play are coming in, and performances were held at Asbury UMC and at First UMC in Hyattsville in November. Several other churches have requested the play, and Williams plans to go 'on the road' during Black History Month next February. The cast is willing, but several will first have to make time in their work schedules, Williams said.

As the AAFC becomes more widely known, Williams predicts she will need some help, either hired or volunteer.

'Right mow I?m publicist, production manager and director,' she said. 'I?ll need someone else.' She?s also writing her first novel, which is about the birth of Christ.

Then she adds, 'God is good. I didn?t know I could do all this stuff.'

SIDEBAR:
To schedule the play, 'The Honorable Josiah Henson,' contact Dottye Williams at