UPTOWNflavor

The Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center (www.Fdcac.org) and the Classical
Theatre of Harlem (www.classicaltheatreofharlem.org) invite you to join us on
Wednesday, November 15th at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, 515 MalcolmX Blvd. at the corner of 135th Street for a Free Staged Reading
of Fugitive Slave written by Henry Robert Burke and Dick Croy and directed by
Petronia Paley. The performance will begin at 7:00p.m. and there will be a
short question and answer session immediately after the play.

The play is based on the historical novel, The River Jordan, written by Mr.
Burke and Mr. Croy and based on the experiences of one family and their escape
from slavery through the eforts of some of the many heroic individuals that
made up the Underground Railroad.This program is supported in part by funding
from NYSCA, the DCA and NYDYCD.

BIOGRAPHIES:

As a child, Henry Robert Burke listened eagerly to factual accounts of the
Underground Railroad related by elderly relatives to whom they had been passed
down as a family legacy by ancestors who actually lived these extraordinary
true-life stories. To the historical events and authentic voices portrayed in
both Fugitive Slave and The River Jordan – a Foreword Magazine book-of-the-year
nominee – he has brought a wealth of period detail from these family stories
and his own extensive studies.

Appointed by the Ohio Bicentennial Commission to serve on the Advisory
Committee for the Underground Railroad, Mr. Burke is a writer, historian and author
of three books about slavery, the abolitionist movement and the history of the Underground Railroad. He has earned a distinguished national reputation for
his more than 30 years of research on these subjects and was awarded the
prestigious John P. Parker Conductor of the Year Award by the National Underground
Railroad Freedom Center.

In addition to writing, producing and directing documentaries, music videos,
television shows and commercials, Dick Croy wrote, edited and co-directed The
Fourth Dimension, an award-winning, internationally distributed 7-hour TV
series on the paranormal (with hosts such as Henry Fonda, Jack Palance and
others) and has written numerous screenplays, five stage plays and six novels. He
and Mr. Burke have collaborated on a number of projects, in addition to
Fugitive Slave, based on the actual escape in 1843 by a mother and her seven children
from an Ohio River tobacco plantation on the Underground Railroad.

Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center
270 West 96th Street
New York, NY 10025
Phone: 212-864-3375
E-m: Fdcac@aol.com
Web Site: www.Fdcac.org